Player: QB Justin Fields
Stock Value: Down
Reasoning: Take all observations from spring practices with a grain of salt. Even so, the reports about how Justin Fields has looked so far with the Pittsburgh Steelers taste pretty salty. Essentially, they all say that he still looks like the quarterback who managed to win ten games in three years. Since spring practices are all we have to go on for now, that’s where we have to leave it. But he will have ample opportunity to shift the narrative during training camp and the preseason.
Here’s a question I’m not sure I’ve seen asked very often: if Russell Wilson weren’t available, would the Steelers have made a much higher bid for Justin Fields? I think it’s a question worth asking because it reflects how they value him. Yes, they traded for him to be a backup for now, with starter potential. But if they were looking for a starter, would they have made the move to get him?
We’ve heard 100 times that the Steelers loved Justin Fields coming out of college, but who didn’t? Every team is going to like a player who went 11th overall, to some degree. You can’t show that little promise and still have an NFL organization invest in you that highly.
And yet, we’re hearing the same things about Fields that we’ve heard for years. Sure, he is a phenomenal athlete, and his running would be a tremendous asset. But how many times out of ten is he going to hit the broad side of a barn? It’s going to take a long time to paint a barn red that way.
Everybody knew that Fields was not a great passer coming out of the draft. Like Lamar Jackson, you draft him because you believe in his overall abilities as a football player and hope that his passing skills catch up to a required level.
Jackson managed to do that, but Fields hasn’t. While it’s still insanely early, it doesn’t sound like his early days as a Steelers are showing much progress. We are still getting reports that he is very inconsistent, including wildly errant passes mixed in with absolute bombs. But if those errant throws are interceptions, the bombs only do so much good.
And let’s be honest: How many people are confident that Fields will make significant strides as a passer in training camp? I think most of us trust the legitimacy of the descriptions of how he has looked on the field thus far.
As the season progresses, Steelers players’ stocks rise and fall. The nature of the evaluation differs with the time of year, with in-season considerations being more often short-term. Considerations in the offseason often have broader implications, particularly when players lose their jobs, or the team signs someone. This time of year is full of transactions, whether minor or major.
A bad game, a new contract, an injury, a promotion—any number of things affect a player’s value. Think of it as a stock on the market, based on speculation. You’ll feel better about a player after a good game, or worse after a bad one. Some stock updates are minor, while others are likely to be quite drastic, so bear in mind the degree. I’ll do my best to explain the nature of that in the reasoning section of each column.
