Welcome to Week 10 of the 2022 Footballguys Roundtable. Our intrepid panel of fantasy pundits discusses and debates four topics every week. Topics are now split into separate features.
This week's roundtable features these four topics:
- Is Justin Fields' Redraft Value Sustainable? (see below)
- Fantasy Shockers of 2022
- From A Mile Away...And Still Missed
- Longshot Victory Laps
Is Justin Fields' Redraft Value Sustainable?
Matt Waldman: Fields has been an elite fantasy quarterback during the past 4-5 weeks. Will this continue for the rest of the end?
Dave Kluge: There’s no reason to expect that he doesn’t. The first few weeks of the Bears’ season were a joke. Whether the team was behind schedule or the new staff didn’t have faith in Fields, their play-calling was historically anemic.
Fields averaged just 15 pass attempts and nine rushes per game through Week 3. Then, the coaching staff decided to kick the training wheels off the offense to see what would happen.
Fields has yet to attempt fewer than 20 passes in a single game since and is averaging 10.7 rushing attempts per game since. His 84.5 rushing yards per game over this stretch would smash the record set by Lamar Jackson in 2019.
With the front office trading away Khalil Mack, Robert Quinn, and Roquan Smith, it’s apparent they are looking to shift their assets to the offensive side of the ball, showing improved faith in Fields. That porous defense should keep the Bears in plenty of shootouts throughout the season.
Will he maintain his status as the overall QB1 through the end of the season? Probably not. Is he a plug-and-play top-10 fantasy quarterback going forward? Absolutely.
Sean Settle: The Bears seem to have finally taken the training wheels off with Fields. They started the season historically bad with him averaging just 15 passes per game and rushing more out of necessity due to plays breaking down than designed runs. A switch has flipped in the past few weeks with Fields with multi-pass touchdown games over the past two weeks and an abundance of rushing yards.
The overall passing yards have not been there. Fields has eclipsed 200 yards passing just once this year. Fields is firmly among the top 10-15 quarterbacks and a viable starting option in fantasy for the rest of the season due to the increased rushing stats. The only major issue not pushing him higher is the overall passing yards. If he can start stringing together more 200+ yard passing games, he would move even higher in the rankings.