Justin Fields winning the MVP in 2023 isn’t a far-fetched suggestion

Recently, two NFL analysts for ESPN, long-time employee Mike Greenberg and former NFL quarterback Dan Orlovsky, have suggested the 2023 NFL MVP award is within reach for Chicago Bears quarterback Justin Fields.

Neither has said Fields will win the award, but Greenberg called Fields “the next superstar quarterback,” and Orlovsky explained that Fields could play at a high enough level in 2023 to warrant some votes when the MVP is decided.

Predictably, this set off a firestorm of criticism on social media. To the casual observer and the online trolls, Fields’ stats to date aren’t anywhere close to MVP levels (which is true), and making a leap of that size is unprecedented, no matter the context.

As I said above, neither Greenberg nor Orlovsky thinks Fields will be the MVP. Only one person any year can win it, and as long as Patrick Mahomes is in this league, everyone else is officially the challenger to that award.

But there are always several runners-up in the voting, and that’s what people mean when they say Fields could play at that level, that he could come in anywhere from second to ninth in the voting. He did finish 9th in MVP voting last season!

How unprecedented would it be for Fields to be a serious contender for the award? Look no further than last year when Jalen Hurts finished second in the voting. Hurts had his “breakout year” in 2022, but at first glance, his stats don’t exactly leap off the page: 3,701 yards, 22 passing touchdowns, and six interceptions.

Very good numbers, but nothing the league hasn’t seen before.

Can Fields replicate those numbers in 2023? With all the upgrades to the offense and a second year in the same system, I don’t see why he can’t. He might have a few more interceptions, but 3,700 yards and 22 touchdowns (or more) should be well within his grasp if he plays the whole year.

Sure, it’s unlikely that Fields will be the 2023 MVP. But after looking at Jalen Hurts’ numbers from 2022, when he finished second in the voting, I think Orlovsky and Greenberg aren’t insane for thinking there’s an outside chance.

Of course, the caveat to all this is how well the Bears do as a team. Fair or not, despite the MVP award being an individual achievement, the voters are humans like the rest of us and generally don’t vote for players from bad teams.

Had the Eagles finished with just nine wins instead of 14, it’s unlikely Hurts would have received so many votes. So if Fields is going to be a runner-up for the award, the Bears as a whole will need to win football games.

Anything less than ten wins and a division title will probably not cut it.

However, on the flip side of all that, if the Bears pull off a miraculous run similar to their 2018 season, finishing with 12 or 13 wins and a division title, all while Fields puts up numbers similar to Hurts? For a huge media-market team like the Bears that hasn’t seen quarterback excellence since the Truman administration? Then I think there’s a strong chance he actually does win the MVP award.