FIELDS OF BATTLE
Ohio St. QB's stock rising heading into title game
This was a reminder. A refresher.
A brief 3 ¹/2-hour history lesson that, no, Justin Fields didn’t somehow lose his skills. They didn’t erode.
That, despite all the doubts and concerns from a few shaky performances to close a disrupted and disjointed season, the player who has been compared at times to goldenboy prospect Trevor Lawrence wasn’t all of a sudden regressing.
It came against Lawrence and Clemson on New Year’s Day, as a big underdog amid questions about Fields’ NFL future. It came after a huge hit that threatened to knock him out of the College Football Playoff semifinal. It came on the sport’s biggest stage.
Fields showed why he was a Heisman Trophy finalist a year ago in his first year as a starting quarterback, why he’s won 20 of his 21 starts at Ohio State, why some NFL team will be happy to have him leading its franchise one day.
With immense pressure on his shoulders, facing Lawrence in the game he had waited a full calendar year to play, Fields was at his very best. He completed 22 of 28 passes for 385 yards and an Ohio State bowl record six touchdown passes. All of this despite searing pain in his right side over the final 35:57 after a helmet-first hit to his ribs by Clemson linebacker James Skalski that was ruled targeting. Fields dominated the game, despite limited mobility for a large segment of the showdown.
“I’ll just never forget that night,” coach Ryan Day said on Thursday over Zoom in advance of Monday’s national championship game against Alabama.
“[Don’t] count him out,” AllAmerican offensive guard Wyatt Davis added. “The shots that he took during that Clemson game, and the fact that he came back after that and had the type of game he had says a lot about the type of leader he is. ... His will to win, I would say, is probably the most impressive thing for me.”
“I think that’s just his DNA and his makeup,” Ohio State offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson said.
There’s very little known about the injury. Ohio State doesn’t comment on injuries. Fields did say he woke up the next day feeling better than expected, though he has dealt with pain more recently. Still, he doesn’t expect it to be an issue.
“I’ll be good by Monday night,” Fields said.
This is, after all, the reason he pushed so hard to play amid the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the big voices in the #WeWantToPlay movement across the sport, a chance to play for a national championship. A shot at No. 1 Alabama. An opportunity he’s only dreamed about.
“All of the stuff that this team has been through and all the stuff that everybody has been through here is just a big sacrifice just for this moment,” the 6-foot-3, 228-pound junior said.
As a true freshman at Georgia, Fields came close to reaching the playoff, losing by a touchdown to Alabama in the SEC Championship game. He was mostly a bystander then, serving as Jake Fromm’s backup for the Bulldogs.
Following the season, he opted to transfer. Fields didn’t visit Ohio State before he committed there. It wasn’t the system or style that sold him. It was Day, the relationship the two quickly developed and the recent success Ohio State quarterbacks had enjoyed.
“Of course he’s been in the NFL,” Fields recalled. “He’s been to the level that I’m trying to go [to].”
Fields will be there soon enough, likely heading to Sundays after Monday’s title game, possibly to the Jets with the second-overall pick after Lawrence is taken first by the Jaguars.
How high he gets selected is obviously uncertain. But Fields certainly helped himself, ESPN’s NFL and college football analyst Dan Orlovsky said, thanks to his performance against Clemson — the toughness, accuracy and poise he displayed.
A former NFL quarterback, Orlovsky was impressed by Fields’ ability to go through his reads and how quickly he made decisions, something he had struggled with at times this year. He can really solidify his status Monday.
“He’s got everything you absolutely want to be the top quarterback or the second quarterback taken,” Orlovsky said. “If he lights up [Clemson defense coordinator] Brent Venables and [Alabama coach] Nick Saban twice in a matter of 10 days, it’s going to be very difficult, with the traits and skill set he has, for him not to be the second quarterback taken.”