Since his standout debut with the New York Jets, Justin Fields hasn’t looked like the same player.

New York’s starting quarterback has been a colossal liability outside of garbage time stat-padding. Fields has gone four straight games without reaching 100 net passing yards before the fourth quarter. During this span, he averaged 53 net passing yards through three quarters.

Read that again: On average, over Fields’ last four starts, the Jets’ offense had 53 passing yards when the fourth quarter began.

That is beyond abysmal in a league where the rules and officiating favor the offense to drive up television ratings.

It’s not just in the stat sheet where Fields has looked drastically different compared to Week 1. The eye test also shows a completely different quarterback.

In his Jets debut, Fields was confident and decisive. He made quick decisions and executed them with gusto.

It seemed as if the Jets had built a perfect system around Fields’ strengths. His legs were the focal point of the game plan. Everything was built around Fields’ ability to threaten the defense as a rusher.

This system was seemingly thrown out the window after Week 1.

Why have the Jets stopped featuring Justin Fields’ legs?

In the season opener, Fields finished with 10 designed rush attempts. While Fields only gained 37 yards on those carries, he had two touchdowns and three more first downs on top of that.

Overall, Fields generated 3.27 EPA (Expected Points Added) on his designed rush attempts against the Steelers. This ranked fourth-best among all players in Week 1, trailing Derrick Henry (+3.49), Daniel Jones (+3.79), and Lamar Jackson (+7.13).

The Jets had Fields looking like one of the most dangerous rushers in football. But even more important than his own rushing impact was its effect on the rest of the offense.

With Fields establishing himself as a dangerous threat in the designed run game, Pittsburgh’s edge rushers had to stay home and respect him, yielding ample space for the Jets to run between the tackles. New York’s running backs ran for 134 yards on 27 carries (5.0 yards per carry).

All of this success on the ground helped make life easier for Fields through the air. Staying ahead of the chains helped open up simpler reads and windows for Fields to exploit in the passing game.

The Jets had every answer to what Pittsburgh threw at them. If they packed the inside, Fields would keep the ball and go to the edge. If they stayed home on the edge, the Jets could pound it up the middle with Breece Hall. And when it came time to mix in a pass, Fields could be trusted to get the job done because of the room opened up by the run game.

Without Fields being a threat to run outside, none of it would be possible.

And over the last four games, Fields has not been a threat to run outside.

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Remember, Fields recorded 10 designed rush attempts in Week 1. Over his last four starts? Just 12 designed rush attempts—a paltry 3.0 per game.

That’s less than one designed Fields run per quarter.

Not only are the Jets calling fewer runs for Fields, but those runs aren’t doing any damage. Since Week 2, Fields has generated precisely 0.0 EPA on his 12 designed rush attempts. That means his carries haven’t hurt the team, but they haven’t helped, either.

For the 2025 Jets, the equation is simple: If Fields isn’t threatening the edge as a runner, the offense is cooked.

If opposing edge defenders don’t have to respect Fields’ legs, they can squeeze in on the inside run game, shutting down the Jets’ running backs. From there, the Jets’ passing game is forced into more second or third-and-longs, allowing the rush to tee off on Fields as he struggles to process downfield reads in obvious passing situations.

It all begs the question: Why have the Jets gone away from Fields in the run game after their Week 1 game plan worked so effectively?

Do the Jets know something the people up here don’t?

Speaking to the media three days after he took nine sacks in London, Fields revealed that his legs “haven’t been feeling the best.”

“The past couple weeks, my legs haven’t been feeling the best,” Fields said on Wednesday. “I got, kind of, a huge contusion vs. Miami [in Week 4]. So, I was working through that the last couple of weeks, but over time I’m getting better, and my legs are kind of getting back under me.”

This is not completely out of the blue. Fields was listed on the Jets’ injury report with a “knee” ahead of their Week 6 game against Denver, although he practiced fully each day.

Fields’ comments raise two possibilities for the Jets. Neither is a good look for the coaching staff.

1. If they knew he wasn’t 100%, why didn’t they bench him?

The Jets have known that Fields is feeling discomfort. He suffered a concussion in Week 2 that knocked him out for one game, and it is clear that the team evaluated him for a contusion after Week 4. So, it’s not as if Fields kept his pain secret from the team and only revealed it now to excuse his play.

Plus, if we go back to Week 2, the Jets were already decreasing their usage of Fields as a rusher before he got knocked out of the game in the fourth quarter.

Fields only ran three designed rush attempts against the Bills, and his first did not come until the Jets’ fifth possession. This raises the possibility that Fields was already dealing with some degree of limitations going into Week 2 (this is speculative, but it’s worth mentioning considering the stark decline in his rushing usage compared to Week 1).

So, in all likelihood, the Jets have been aware of Fields’ physical discomfort and limitations for quite some time. At the very least, they have known about it since the Week 4 game in Miami, and at most, they may have had signals dating all the way back to the lead-up into Week 2.

Either way, if they had this knowledge, it makes their decision to keep him on the field against Denver even more puzzling.

Clearly, Fields’ recent discomfort hasn’t been severe enough to prevent him from playing, so the Jets decided to keep rolling with him as the starter in Week 6. That’s all well and good. But knowing that Fields was less than 100%, and also knowing the importance of Fields’ mobility to his effectiveness… why would the Jets keep him on the field after seeing for two quarters that he wasn’t capable of keeping the offense afloat?

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New York had many chances to see that Fields’ pre-game ailments were preventing him from playing at a passable level. The Jets could have won the game by pulling Fields for Tyrod Taylor after the third quarter. They could have even done it after one of his failed drives in the fourth quarter.

It made too much sense. Fields was crushing the team, and if the coaches knew that it may have been at least partially because of his health, they should have had a quick trigger. Not only would their knowledge of his ailments make it easier to trust that they were making the right call by pulling him out in favor of Taylor, but it would have given them an easy escape in the media after the game.

With the built-in excuse of his lower-body injuries, the Jets could have passed off their benching of Fields as injury-related and turned back to him as the starter in Week 7. Instead, Aaron Glenn has to step up to the podium and give cringeworthy answers as to why Fields continues to start despite poor play. This all could have been avoided. Fans and media would have given Glenn more leeway if the team framed an injury-related benching for Fields.

If Fields has truly been playing through weak legs, the Jets’ failure to bench him makes them look even more incompetent than they already did. This is not to say that Fields’ weak legs were enough to excuse how poorly he played (his mistakes are mostly mental), but it is baffling that the staff couldn’t take advantage of such an easy avenue to make a change that would have improved the team’s odds of winning. Fields arguably deserved a benching even before accounting for any injury issues; if injury issues were involved, it should have been the no-brainer to end all no-brainers.

That’s only if the team did view Fields’ ailments as a legitimate concern. We don’t know that for sure. If that wasn’t the case, the Jets’ coaches would come out looking bad in a different way.

2. The ailment is exaggerated, and Engstrand is simply making poor schematic decisions

The second possibility is that Fields’ pain following his contusion was an exaggeration that he threw out there to try and excuse his historically poor play. Aside from being a bad look for Fields, this would deflect blame onto offensive coordinator Tanner Engstrand for his questionable game planning.

Considering that Fields fully practiced over the next two weeks following the Miami game, his contusion clearly wasn’t severe enough for the Jets to feel as if any sort of precaution was necessary for their starting quarterback. This suggests that he may have been pretty much 100% healthy from a physical standpoint.

And as we look back through Fields’ four-game stretch of declined involvement in the run game, there is plenty of evidence that his athleticism has been perfectly fine over that stretch. His most impressive athletic feat of the year was his 43-yard touchdown scramble against the Dolphins in Week 4, yet the Jets were already dwindling his usage on designed runs before he suffered a contusion in that game or even his concussion in Week 2.

If Fields has been perfectly fine, and his supposed lower-body discomfort was not flagged by the team as a real concern, then it means Engstrand has simply been making bizarre decisions with the scheme.

The Jets signed Fields and handed him their starting quarterback job for one reason: His elite abilities as a rusher give the offense a higher ceiling than it would have with Tyrod Taylor. So, what’s the point of using Fields if he is going to get three designed runs per game?

Engstrand can be excused for his game plans if he was building them with the knowledge that Fields was less than 100% (pointing us back to possibility No. 1: Glenn should have benched him).

But if Fields’ health has been a non-factor in the Jets’ recent game-planning, it’s a bad look for the rookie OC. That would mean Engstrand has simply neglected to feature the one thing Fields is great at—the same thing that made the Jets’ offense hum in its lone quality performance this year.

Someone looks silly here

Fields’ comments about his lower-body discomfort make either Aaron Glenn or Tanner Engstrand look bad.

We can’t say which side is more at fault without knowing the information on Fields’ health that New York’s coaches were given throughout the past few weeks. Much of this conversation is speculative.

However, there is no way for New York’s coaching staff to come out of this looking good. One of two things happened:

Glenn missed an easy opportunity to use the red flags about Fields’ health as a green light to bench him against Denver, likely costing the Jets a win and also creating more trouble for himself in the media.

Fields has been perfectly fine, and Engstrand is flat-out neglecting to feature his starting quarterback’s best attribute.

One way or another, the Jets’ coaching staff is mismanaging the game’s most important position. Either they’ve hidden Fields’ physical limitations from the world—only making themselves look more foolish for not benching him—or their offensive coordinator is building suboptimal game plans.

Take your pick, Jets fans. It’s a lose-lose scenario for a coaching staff whose quest for a victory is taking longer than Justin Fields throwing a quick out.