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As Mike Tomlin often says “This is the NFL, routine plays need to be made routinely.”
And one of the reasons Justin Fields was benched on Monday is that he misses too many layups in the passing game, to borrow a basketball term.
On the Jets second drive of the Jets recent loss to New England, he missed a layup on a short pass to WR Adonai Mitchell.
“It was just a hitch route on the second drive of the game,” said former NFL QB Jim Miller on SiriusXM NFL Radio, “It’s off coverage by the corner. Literally, that pass should be hit 100 percent of the time. He wasn’t even close.”
Then late in the first half, another layup was missed to a wide-open Mitchell.
“Then the rub route to AD Mitchell,” Miller said. “I know AD Mitchell just got there. AD Mitchell is in the slot. There is an outside receiver. It’s man coverage. The outside receiver rubs (CB Christian) Gonzalez the DB on New England to free up AD Mitchell along the (right) sideline. It basically becomes a fade depending on how the DB plays it. Gonzalez gets caught up in the wash and completely misses AD Mitchell. I know AD Mitchell just go there, but if you just put it on him, that play should be completed 100 percent of the time. Those are misses that just can’t happen in the NFL.”
Miller feels that Fields’ footwork can be problematic.
“To me, Justin Fields’ feet sometimes are never even set,” Miller said.
Former Jets executive Pat Kirwan feels the player’s feet often tell him to take off after just one read.
“He took off on pass plays where he couldn’t see anything,” Kirwan said on SiriusXM NFL Radio. “His feet tell him after one read to go. That is the general consensus. I don’t see him jumping from two to three and getting from the right side to the left side. I don’t see a lot of that. I see him reading the right side or reading the left, but mostly the right and then taking off. You can’t win that way, and he’s not winning that way.”
But Kirwan had no issue with the Jets dialing up a lot of running plays for Fields, or the QB choosing to run a lot on his own.
“And I’m not surprised he’s doing it,” Kirwan said. “Look. If you need to win games. If you are just trying to win games. Just let him run because that is the only thing he will do well enough. But he won’t do well enough for you to win a bunch of games. He will do well enough to win once in a while.”
That last point from Kirwan lays it out perfectly. When you have a QB who runs a lot, you are going to win games sometimes, but you are going to probably lose more than you win.
John Elway put it best a few years ago about running quarterbacks:
“The bottom line is that I believe the one thing is that you’ve got to be able to win from the pocket,” Elway said. “No matter what you do, I think the one thing that I’ve learned is as a quarterback you’ve got to be able to win it from the pocket. You can win games but you can’t win championships unless you have the ability to win it from the pocket. Then if you can get out and move around and create, and do those types of things, then that’s an added bonus.”
Bingo, if you want to supplement good pocket passing with some QB runs here and there, that is fine, but if you run having more success with your feet than you arm at QB, on the NFL level, it’s hard for the team to win consistently.
November 18, 2025
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