Justin Fields is the latest Black QB to get hit with the useless 'one read' label

The pre-draft Justin Fields discourse has predictably gone off the rails.

As they say: NFL draft season hasn’t officially started until anonymous folks start questioning the intelligence of a top quarterback prospect. More often than not, that quarterback is Black and, in that regard, the 2021 draft season is no different from the others.

It’s Ohio State’s Justin Fields in the spotlight this year. The 21-year-old, who left Columbus sporting a 63-9 touchdown-to-interception ratio, has been considered a sure-fire top-five pick for over a year now but now we’re getting reports that NFL teams are concerned about his ability to “scan the field” and “get through progressions.”

Roll the tape (via Pro Football Network):

“The main concern is that Justin Fields stares down the primary target. He doesn’t look away from the primary target. He doesn’t process things as quickly as they want him to. During the Senior Bowl, I mentioned how there was one team that has broken down all of Justin Fields’ passes in 2020. They said that just seven times, he looked off the primary target. The other 200+ passes he threw to his primary target.”

That’s from PFN’s draft insider Tony Pauline — who added that he doesn’t necessarily agree with the assessment, for what it’s worth — but he’s not the first to highlight concerns about Fields’ ability to process. That’s probably been the biggest gripe with him as a prospect.

Here’s the thing: While I’ve heard a lot about Fields’ inability to get off his first read, I haven’t really seen a lot of examples of this playing out on the field. And when I did my own review of Fields film, I had a hard time finding any myself.

On the other hand, it wasn’t very hard to find examples of him scanning the field and going through progressions.

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You see that crowd. That’s 2019. Fields was already showing the ability to scan the field during his first year as a starter!

You can find a handful of examples from his last game as a starter, too:

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I have to wonder what that NFL team was watching when it came up with the only seven throws to secondary targets stat. “What do you consider a primary target?” would be my first question.

Here’s a not-so-well-kept secret: There isn’t only one way to read out a play. On some plays, the quarterback might be asked to go through a “full-field” progression, which is probably the type of read most people think of when they hear the term progressions. You’re not seeing a whole lot of that at the college level, but there are some pass concepts in the Ohio State playbook that fall under the category.

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You’ll also have your half-field reads, where the quarterback is picking a side based on the coverage shell or whether the defense is playing man or zone. There is a lot of that in the Ohio State playbook. Here’s an example straight out of it.

On the left, you can see the progression. The quarterback establishes what kind of coverage he’s getting based on the free safety and then goes from there. Now let’s take a look at a real-life example from the last game Fields played for the Buckeyes. Here’s the play design…

Fields is reading the two safeties (highlighted in pink) and their movement tells Fields which side of the play design to work. Alabama plays man coverage with only one safety in the deep middle, so Fields smartly throws the slot fade route, where he has a good matchup.

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From the end zone angle, you can see him checking the safeties during his drop…

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Does he get credit for his process there or no? What about when he’s executing a simple half-field read…

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Is that corner route he threw considered his first read? Or was it the shorter route by the perimeter receiver? Or was he reading the cornerback’s movement and deciding where to throw based on that?

It depends, is probably the best answer you’re going to get.

How was this play graded by that anonymous NFL team?

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Looks like an easy read and throw, but Fields is throwing “hot.” The offensive line is sliding to his right, so Fields knows if that linebacker to the left (No. 13) comes, the left tackle will be overloaded.

Now does that count as a “first read” play or does Fields get credit for recognizing the pressure and knowing where to throw it?

My answer: Who cares!

We get way too caught up on whether these 20-year-olds are doing things we expect to see out of an NFL vet and overlook the most pressing question: Can they play? Too often, we’re looking for examples of a prospect cosplaying as a 10-year vet instead of the special traits that we should be looking for in a first-round prospect.

The whole “one-read quarterback” thing is mostly nonsense. That’s especially true when evaluating college quarterbacks, who aren’t going to be asked to do Drew Brees things in the pocket. For instance, why are we dinging a quarterback for not throwing a “sight adjust” when it’s not even in the Ohio State playbook?

Fields had no problem carrying out the things he was asked to do, and it didn’t appear as if Ohio State pared down the playbook to assist him. That’s really the only question we should be asking: Was he able to do what the offense asked of him? With Fields, the answer is an easy “Yes.”

It almost feels like people are going out of their way to find faults in Fields’ game. Every young quarterback locks onto his first read a bit too long. Every young quarterback gets fooled by an intricate blitz design or a well-disguised coverage. If it’s constantly happening, it’s a problem.

I’d say the opposite is true for Fields. He doesn’t get fooled often, and when Ohio State does “lose” the play-call, the young quarterback consistently figures out a way to bail his team out. In other words, he got the most out of an admittedly very good system; but he also elevated it when need be. This wasn’t Jared Goff riding Sean McVay’s coattails to a big contract. This was more like Pat Mahomes making Andy Reid’s offense look better than we already knew it was.

Now let’s ask the awkward question: Why are we only hearing these questions about the offense in regards to Fields? Why aren’t we wondering whether or not Trevor Lawrence can get through a progression when he’s playing in one of the more rudimentary schemes you’ll find at a Power 5 school? Why isn’t Zach Wilson, who might as well have been wearing a red practice jersey in that BYU offense, hearing the same questions? What about Mac Jones, who racked up a lot of his yards on RPOs?

It feels very much like the 2017 pre-draft discourse, when Deshaun Watson heard questions about the offense in which he played — the very same Lawrence played in — while Mitchell Trubisky was oddly given the benefit of the doubt. If your favorite team is drafting in the top-five and in need of a quarterback, you better hope they don’t fall into the same trap.