Justin Fields, Mac Jones, & Armchair Analysis

Author: Matt Iberger

Editor: Fran Attie

It’s finally that time of the year again. When all the football junkies who have been surviving off past season’s highlights, letting their minds race with scenarios of all that could have turned out differently (Tampa Bay fans not included), are about to get some rest: the NFL Draft is upon us!

With less than 48 hours to go until the Jacksonville Jaguars are on the clock, sportswriters, NFL insiders, and even casual fans are making mock drafts faster than we can count. At the end of the day, however, that is all they are; mock drafts—mostly educated guesses on what we expect teams to do, away for a lot of fans to do their own armchair analysis. This is what I want to really focus on since most people seem to miss this point. A majority of people have no idea what NFL teams are thinking behind the scenes, and after any clear “can’t miss prospects” (who aren’t even can’t miss sometimes), it is really hard to say who goes where. The NFL Throwbacks Youtube channel does a great job of highlighting this in their “Hit, Miss or Meh” playlist, where they rate draft picks years after they have been drafted to see if they lived up to expectations. Looking at the 2017 NFL draft video and hearing some of the names makes you cringe, even more so when at the time the pick looked incredibly solid. There were a lot of “mehs” and “misses” in the first round (notable mentions: Solomon Thomas, OJ Howard, Evan Engram, Mitchell Trubisky), which just show how much of a guessing game the first round can be.

So, why do I bring this up? Simply put, despite all the evidence showing this, we still have a lot of people who fail to realize it. “Why did your mock put x players on y team? That’s so stupid!”. Well, to be quite frank, a lot of NFL teams are stupid (which is why all 32 are not equally competitive every year) and all have their own big boards with their own opinions on prospects. It is why you will sometimes see prospects skid or be drafted higher than usual since these NFL executives and scouts see a lot more than we do on what each player is really like. Every draft we have some sort of pot-stirring debate from the draft. Daniel Jones being drafted over Dwayne Haskins (or even at 6 in general) comes to mind, the Josh Allen bust or star debate, or the more recent Tua vs Justin Herbet debate on who the Dolphins should take at quarterback. The thing is, in the moment, these were all reasonable debates, and some of these still are being debated.

This year, it is Mac Jones versus Justin Fields going 3rd overall to San Francisco (or to a lesser extent, Zach Wilson versus Justin Fields for the Jets). Now, a player like Mac Jones who was projected second or less before the season, to mid/late first round during the season, to now top 3 seems like a crazy response to his present success. While fans each have their own particular order on the top 5 quarterbacks of this draft and reasonable film or stats to back it up, what can’t be debated is how little we know about how that will translate into the NFL. This isn’t just quarterbacks though, and I can make this same argument for the Devonta Smith vs Ja’Marr Chase crowd, or even the surge in Kyle Pitts hype in recent weeks. For any player there is a lot that goes into how successful they are and a mock putting a guy you think will be a bust at a higher spot than you like does not mean the world is ending. I am not even a Mac Jones truther myself and am pretty skeptical and agree that 3rd overall would seem fairly high, but the draft community is losing their mind as if there is no chance a Fields, Wilson, or even Lawrence could bust as well. I am not saying to quit the criticism of Mac Jones or any other prospect, but to say we know he’s going to bust seems to be jumping the gun. This could be Mitchell Trubisky all over again, or it could be Justin Herbert/Josh Allen where many people questioned them straight out and they made up for it.

The draft is a crapshoot, and it’s time we hop out of our armchairs and just enjoy making mocks and speculating for the sake of speculating. Sit back and enjoy the ride.