The poor performances against Indiana and the dreadful performance against Northwestern where OSU has a huge talent advantage are especially concerning. He did put up big numbers against Clemson but the Clemson secondary was terrible in that game.
The big question I've heard on Fields is on his ability to process data quickly and go through his progressions. Supposedly one of the NFL teams reviewed all his 200+ pass attempts and Fields threw to his primary target on all but 7 attempts.
Personally I find his sack numbers interesting. In 2020, 21 sacks in 8 games including 5 sacks by Indiana. In 2019, 31 sacks in 14 games but 5 each in the two games against Wisconsin and 4 in the Clemson game. That's a lot of sacks for a QB whose athleticism and mobility are so hyped.
As a Bama fan, Manzel scared me. Watson scared me. Even with the dreadful Oklahoma defense, Kyler Murray scared me a bit. Fields didn't scare me.
Nothing for nothing but Indiana had the 5th ranked defense in the country and Northwestern was the #1 ranked defense. Yes he played poorly against them but it is not like it was against bums.
According to whom? I'd suggest those B10 defensives were overrated in the stats because they faced weak B10 offenses. That supposed #1 Northwestern defense allowed Sermon to rush for 331 yards.
Northwestern did beat a pretty poor Auburn team that played without their top RB. But Bo Nix
put up reasonably good numbers against Northwestern while Fields numbers against NW were dreadful.
Nix 25/42 292 1 TD 0 INT 125.8 Rtg
Fields 12/27 114 0 TD 2 INT 65.1 Rtg
Even if Northwestern's defense was actually the #1 defense, Fields performance was dreadful in this era which heavily favors the offense. If Fields performance drops off so much against better college defenses, how is he going to perform against NFL professional defenses? Fields won't have the huge talent advantage in the NFL that he does at OSU.
Northwestern did hold Auburn to 19 points (only Alabama and Georgia held them lower than that). Indiana held Ole Miss to 26, their second lowest total on the season (Bama let them score 48 and Florida 35, as a point of comparison).
Fields had 300 passing yards and 78 rushing yards against Indiana. He had 3 INT's which has been the focus, but it isn't like he had a super poor game and as we all know INT's often aren't the fault of the QB (at least one of those wasn't his fault).
Against Alabama (who basically crushed everyone), Fields was clearly still injured from that nasty hit he took in the Clemson game. And Alabama crushed everyone last year.
The prior year, the Buckeyes only loss was to Clemson, in which Fields once again had an awesome game. He was also excellent against Michigan and Wisconsin the two biggest games of the year before Clemson.
This was a weird season. I have a hard time putting much stock into anything that happened. I mean Trey Lance didn't even play a season last year.
I will also leave you with this stat line 19-30, 240 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT, and a QBR of 68.1. That folks, is Zach Wilson's game against Coastal Carolina, which BYU lost and cost them a potential New Years 6 bowl birth (probably would have gone to Cincinnati anyway, but that game eliminated BYU putting them firmly behind unbeaten Coastal Carolina and unbeaten Cincinnati). Against Indiana Fields QBR was 82.4 and against Bama it was 87.2. He was awful against Northwestern at 33.4, of course Ohio State won that game by 2 scores.
The nitpicking of Fields is irrational. It doesn't make sense. Everyone has flaws (even Lawrence), yet everyone seems to be ignoring the flaws of everyone else. Only Fields seemed to be hurt by his.