Today is the third of eight articles taking a closer look at Justin Fields’ 2022 season.

• Part 1: Comparison to rookie season and growth throughout 2022
• Part 2: Where and how effectively Fields threw the ball.
• Part 3: How Fields did on different types of plays (play action, quick vs. slow developing).
• Part 4: How often Fields was under pressure, and who was to blame.
• Part 5: How Fields performed under pressure.
• Part 6: How efficiently Fields produced explosive plays.
• Part 7: How Fields did against man and zone.
• Part 8: Fields’ future outlook.

All data comes from Pro Football Focus (PFF) unless otherwise noted, and Fields’ stats are only from Week 5 on, as was explained in part one of this series.

Play Action

Let’s start by looking at how Justin Fields did on play-action drop backs compared to standard passing plays. Before I present the full data, I want to briefly explain two PFF stats that will be used:

• Big Time Throw: these are best described as a pass with excellent ball location and timing, generally thrown further down the field and/or into a tighter window. In other words, these are really good, difficult passes that should result in highly valuable big plays. A higher % here is better.
• Turnover Worthy Play: These include fumbles in the pocket, interceptions thrown, and interceptable passes that were not caught. A lower % here is better.

Both of these stats will admittedly have some subjectivity, but they provide a useful glimpse into how frequently a QB makes a really good play vs. a really bad one.

The table below shows how Fields performed in a wide variety of statistics in play action (orange) vs. other dropbacks (blue), and also includes Fields’ rank out of 33 total NFL QBs who had at least 240 pass attempts. Information on the spread of all NFL QBs is also provided for each stat. Cells highlighted in green indicate Fields was among the top 25% of QBs in this category, while those in red indicate Fields was in the bottom 25% of QBs.

A few thoughts:

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Today is the second of eight articles taking a closer look at Justin Fields’ 2022 season.

• Part 1: Comparison to rookie season and growth throughout 2022
• Part 2: Where and how effectively Fields threw the ball.
• Part 3: How Fields did on different types of plays (play action, quick vs. slow developing).
• Part 4: How often Fields was under pressure, and who was to blame.
• Part 5: How Fields performed under pressure.
• Part 6: How efficiently Fields produced explosive plays.
• Part 7: How Fields did against man and zone.
• Part 8: Fields’ future outlook.

All data comes from Pro Football Focus (PFF) unless otherwise noted, and Fields’ stats are only from week 5 on, as was explained in part one of this series.

Sorting by Depth

The table below shows information splitting the field into four areas, which I will refer to as behind the line, short (0-9 yards), medium (10-19 yards), and deep (20+ yards downfield). Fields’ pass frequency, accuracy, completion percentage, and yards/attempt are shown, as well as how he ranked compared to 33 NFL QBs with at least 240 pass attempts. The best, average, and worst value from around the NFL is given, and any areas where Fields was in the top 25% are highlighted in green, while areas in the bottom 25% are highlighted in red.

[Quick note: I realize the numbers for frequency don’t add up to 100%, but this is PFF’s data, and it’s the same data for everybody, so I’m just rolling with it for a fair comparison. My guess is that they are excluding throwaway passes that didn’t have a clearly defined target, which account for the missing percentage.]

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Justin Fields has finished his 2nd NFL season, and the Bears have clearly committed to him as their quarterback for at least 2023. With that in mind, let’s take stock of how Fields grew (and didn’t grow) from his rookie season, where his strengths and weaknesses lie, and what he needs to improve to take the next step.

Like I did with Fields in Focus last offseason, this will be an in-depth series exploring several different aspects of Fields’ performance in 2022. The overall breakdown will look like this:

• Part 1: Comparison to rookie season and growth throughout 2022
• Part 2: Where and how effectively Fields threw the ball.
• Part 3: How Fields did on different types of plays (play action, quick vs. slow developing).
• Part 4: How often Fields was under pressure, and who was to blame.
• Part 5: How Fields performed under pressure.
• Part 6: How efficiently Fields produced explosive plays.
• Part 7: How Fields did against man and zone.
• Part 8: Fields’ future outlook.

Rookie Comparison

Let’s start today by taking a brief look at Fields’ basic statistics and how they compared to his rookie year. The table below shows how the two seasons stack up, as well as the NFL average for 2022 (calculated by team for any volume stats).

A few thoughts:

• The first thing that stands out is that Fields threw the ball less often in year two than year one. On the surface, this seems surprising, as usually teams will ask a QB to throw more often as he matures.
  • I was tempted to chalk this up to Fields taking more sacks and scrambling more frequently in 2022, but that hypothesis didn’t pan out. Fields was sacked 3.6 times/game as a rookie and 3.7 times/game in 2022, and Pro Football Focus (PFF) charted Fields with 4.5 scrambles/game in his rookie season compared to 4.7 scrambles/game in year two. Adding in sacks and scrambles, Fields dropped back to pass 35 times/game as a rookie and 29 times/game in year two.
  • The difference, then, comes from the new offensive scheme, which was intentionally more run heavy. In 2021, the Bears ran it on 44% of offensive plays, but that increased to 56% in 2022.
• Taking more sacks is worrying. Ideally you would like to see that rate go down as Fields gets more familiar with the speed of NFL defenses, as happened throughout the course of his rookie season. We’ll look at sacks and pressure in more detail later in this series, but this is definitely something that needs to improve. An optimist could say this is largely due to the talent the Bears lost on offense after 2021 more than anything Fields did, as Allen Robinson, Jason Peters, and James Daniels all left in free agency and there were essentially no resources invested in replacing them.

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Prior days explored the tackles and guards, and today will focus on center, with a bonus glance at tight end and wide receiver blocking.

Center

Let’s start with center, the last position on the offensive line and an area that has been held down exclusively by Sam Mustipher for the last two seasons.

Pass Blocking

The table below shows how Mustipher held up in pass protection compared to the 39 centers around the NFL who had at least 200 pass blocking snaps. All data is from Pro Football Focus (PFF), and true pass sets are intended to remove plays designed to minimize the pass rush, such as screens, play action, and rollout. Cells highlighted in green indicate a rank in the top 25%, while red indicates the bottom 25%.

There’s really only one takeaway here: Sam Mustipher is awful in pass protection. Every column that’s not red just missed the cutoff. (Every Bears fan already knows this, so I don’t think we’re breaking any new ground.)

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Yesterday, we explored the tackles, where Braxton Jones looks like a solid starter. Today, we will look at the guards.

Pass Blocking

The Bears had four guards play meaningful snaps last year, and the table below shows how they held up in pass protection compared to the 77 guards around the NFL who had at least 200 pass blocking snaps (Lucas Patrick did not have enough snaps to qualify, so his ranks are where he would have fit if he did). All data is from Pro Football Focus (PFF), and true pass sets are intended to remove plays designed to minimize the pass rush, such as screens, play action, and rollout. Cells highlighted in green indicate they ranked in the top 25%, while red indicates the bottom 25%.

A few thoughts:

• Like we saw with the tackles, the Bears minimized the amount of true pass sets in order to protect an offensive line that they didn’t trust to hold up in protection. And like we saw with tackles, they generally had good reason not to trust the line, as there’s a whole lot of red and not a lot of green in this chart.
• Looking at individual players, the top three aren’t too bad. Nobody really stands out as being all that good, but they’re mostly around average to maybe a bit below average.
• Lucas Patrick, on the other hand, was horrible. I know he struggled through injuries last year, but he was legitimately one of the worst guards in the NFL.

Teven Jenkins got a lot of hype from Bears fans last year, but he seemed to struggle a bit as a pass protector, especially in true pass sets. Of course, it was his first season as a starter, so it’s possible that he improved as the season went on, like we saw from Braxton Jones yesterday. The table below looks at his performance when splitting the season into four-game intervals. Jenkins got hurt during the season in 2022, so he only played five games from Week 9 on, and those are all put into one sample.

Here you can see that some improvement was made as a pass protector, at least based on PFF’s grades. This is especially evident in the true pass sets, which is where Jenkins most struggled. Hopefully that progress can continue going forward.

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Free agency is right around the corner, and the Bears have money to spend. In order to best understand which positions they need to prioritize, it helps to examine who they have coming back. I already did that at both defensive end and defensive tackle, and this week the focus shifts to the offensive line. That starts today with a look at the tackles.

Pass Blocking

The Bears had three offensive tackles play meaningful snaps last year, and the table below shows how they held up in pass protection compared to the 79 tackles around the NFL who had at least 200 pass blocking snaps. All data is from Pro Football Focus (PFF), and true pass sets are intended to remove plays designed to minimize the pass rush, such as screens, play action, and rollout. Cells highlighted in green indicate they ranked in the top 25%, while red indicates the bottom 25%.

A few thoughts:

• The first thing to notice is that the Bears utilized true pass sets at among the lowest rate of any NFL team last year. This indicates the lack of trust they had in their offensive line. To think of it another way, the Bears helped their offensive line in pass protection more than pretty much any NFL team.
• The rest of the data makes it pretty clear why the Bears didn’t trust their tackles to hold up in pass protection. All three of them ranked below average in pretty much every category.
• This data is especially concerning for Braxton Jones, who graded the worst of the three but is generally expected to be Chicago’s starting left tackle in 2023. However, he was a rookie in 2022, so perhaps he showed growth throughout the season. To check that hypothesis, the table below shows how he graded if you split the season into four-game samples. (Five games at the end of the year. Curse you, 17th game for messing up the easy sample breakdown!)

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In part one, we found that the Bears actually had a respectable pass rush for the first part of the year, but trading Robert Quinn had a profound impact, leaving them with the worst pass rush of any NFL team in the last five years post-trade.

In part two, we found that Trevis Gipson is a quality second defensive end, but only if there is a quality starter opposite him, which the Bears will need to find this offseason.

The Inside Men

The Bears had four defensive tackles with at least 150 pass rush snaps in 2022, and three of them – Armon Watts, Angelo Blackson, and Mike Pennel Jr. – are free agents, so it will be very easy to remake this position substantially if they want to.

The table below shows how those four performed in a variety of per-snap metrics, including how they ranked compared to the 104 defensive tackles league-wide who had at least 150 pass rush snaps. All data comes from Pro Football Focus (PFF). (Side note: Pass Rush Productivity is a unique PFF stat that accounts for all sacks, QB hits, and pressures on a per-snap basis, with an added weight given to sacks; a higher value is better.) Values in the top 25% are highlighted in green, while those in the bottom 25% are highlighted in red.

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In part one, we found that the Bears actually had a respectable pass rush for the first part of the year, but trading Robert Quinn had a profound impact, leaving them with the worst pass rush of any NFL team in the last five years post-trade. Since their pass rush after the trade was so bad, it stands to reason that they need a whole host of new pass rushers. To figure that out a little more clearly, let’s start by looking at who they have returning from last year.

Individual pass rush data is going to come from Pro Football Focus (PFF). They track pressures quite differently than Pro Football Reference, but I think the data is of better quality, so I’m going to use it. PFF doesn’t provide team-wide data, so that is why I used Pro Football Reference data in part one.

What They Have

The Bears had three defensive ends who played meaningful snaps in 2022, and all but the recently cut Al-Quadin Muhammad are under contract for 2023. The table below shows how they performed in a variety of per-snap metrics, including how they ranked compared to the 117 edge rushers league-wide who had at least 150 pass rush snaps. (Side note: Pass Rush Productivity is a unique PFF stat that accounts for all sacks, QB hits, and pressures on a per-snap basis, with an added weight given to sacks; a higher value is better.) Values in the top 25% are highlighted in green, while those in the bottom 25% are highlighted in red.

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Every Bears fan knows the team had a terrible pass rush last year, which is why they have been heavily rumored to be interested in high-priced free agent defensive linemen and highly regarded pass rushers at the top of the draft. But to better understand what the Bears need, let’s first look at exactly how bad they were last year, and what they have returning. That will help figure out exactly what they need to add in order to bring their pass rush up to par in 2023.

Team Pass Rush

All of this data will be pulled from Pro Football Reference, which has advanced statistics going back to 2018. That gives us a sample size of five seasons, or 160 teams.

However, I found that pass rush has varied quite a bit from year to year, with the average pressure rate fluctuating between 22% and 26% and the sack rate between 5.9% and 6.8%. In a simple effort to scale statistics for a between the years comparison, I looked at the sack or pass rush differential. For example, in 2022 the average pressure rate was 22.3%, so a team generating pressure on 23.3% of dropbacks was 1.0% above average, or would have a pressure differential of 1.0%. That same 23.3% would be 2.0% below the 25.3% average in 2021, so it would get a -2.0% pressure differential that year.

The table below shows how the Bears fared in the major pass rush stats compared to all 160 teams since 2018. Areas where they ranked in the top 25% are highlighted in green, while those where they ranked in the bottom 25% are highlighted in red.

As you can see, it’s not pretty. Chicago’s pass rush was among the worst in the NFL over the last five years in every category. This shouldn’t be a shock to anybody who watched the Bears last year.

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Bears fans enter the 2023 offseason full of optimism, and for good reason. The team currently has:

• Justin Fields, who took a big step forward in 2022, and looks poised for bigger things in 2023 and beyond.
• The first pick, which can be traded for a host of picks because they don’t need a QB.
• The most cap room in the NFL by over $30 million.

The 2022 season may have seen the Bears stumble to a league-worst 3-14 record, but fans are rightfully excited about the possibilities for improvement heading into 2023. Recent NFL history, however, tells us that we should temper our expectations for just how much better the Bears will be next year.

One Awful Season

Let’s start by looking at teams who had one awful season, similar to Chicago’s three wins in 2022. Over the last 15 years, dating back to 2008, there have been 33 teams who had 3 or less wins in a season. Here’s how the next year went:

• Average of 5.9 wins, median of six.
• Eight of 33 teams (24%) finished above .500.
• 11 of 33 teams (33%) had four or fewer wins.

That’s not very encouraging; fewer than one in four teams finished with a winning record, and more than one in three still lost at least 75% of their games the following year. If you’re more of a visual person, the graph below shows the range of wins for the teams in this sample.

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