Chicago Bears: Comparing Justin Fields to Aaron Rodgers’ college production
By Ryan Heckman
Comparing Chicago Bears rookie Justin Fields to Aaron Rodgers’ scouting reports
This piece isn’t necessarily to make Justin Fields out to look like the better quarterback, because that’s far from the truth. Rodgers is as talented as just about any quarterback in NFL history. But, Rodgers’ future didn’t always look so bright. His college scouting reports were pretty interesting and might describe why he fell.
A few snippets from Rodgers’ scouting reports are as follows:
”Alex Smith is a better athlete.”
”I think he (Rodgers) has a good chance of being a bust.”
“He’s a system quarterback. Can’t create on his own. Panics under pressure.”
There are quite a few more baffling takes here. But, there were certainly worries about Rodgers and thus he fell quite a bit in the draft.
This year, Fields also fell much further than he should have. By most accounts, Fields was the second-best quarterback in this draft. But, some experts took the only bad games he ever played and ran with them. Fields only had a couple of games at Ohio State where he played poorly.
People point out, specifically, the game against Indiana where Fields threw three picks and took five sacks. If you go back and watch the tape, there were still some excellent throws in that game and Fields was victim of a few instances where his linemen stood straight up and looked clueless while he was running for his life.
Yet, he came up roses on the big stages. Go figure.
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A full body of work will show just how polished Fields is. He’s dynamic. He’s ready for the NFL. Maybe Rodgers wasn’t looked at as being “ready,” but he sure proved those scouts wrong. Fields will do the same, and could end up being an all-time franchise great in Chicago like Rodgers has done in Green Bay.