I don’t think much has to be said about Justin Fields. Sure, Matt Nagy has said Andy Dalton will start the season but any NFL fan knows that once Fields gets thrown in he’ll be a top-tier quarterback right off the bat. The only question is how long will it be until he gets the reins because Dalton is looking awesome at training camp. The tweets below show the beautiful passes he’s been throwing, making me think he’s taken the next step and is about to have a breakout year competing with the best QBs in the league. I know you may be thinking “that’s just the Bears twitter account tweeting out highlights,it’s not indicative of any kind of big leap by Dalton” but I disagree. Why would the Bears tweet these if every throw hasn’t been this good? That would just be getting fans’ hopes up for nothing. Now let’s look at the other NFC North quarterbacks.
Packers: Aaron Rodgers is coming off of an MVP season and has consistently been among the top 3 QBs throughout his career, but this off season showed it will be a down year for Rodgers.He hates the Packers organization and simply does not want to be in Green Bay. He made them trade for Randall Cobb so that he can have a friend to just kick back and relax with while he goes through the motions for his last year in Green Bay. I have no doubt he’ll be back to MVP level play when he finds a team he actually wants to play for. Until then, he’ll just be in a holding pattern.
Vikings: Kirk Cousins has just entered the NFL’s Covid protocol and will have to miss at least 5 days of training camp before returning to practice. I’d put Dalton and Cousins pretty close to each other in terms of skill level so these missed reps are really going to cost the Minnesota QB. While he’s sitting in quarantine, Dalton and Fields will be continuing to get better and really separating themselves from Cousins.
Lions: Jared Goff is a decent QB but he’s no Matt Stafford. If the Lions still had Stafford they’d most likely have the best quarterback in the division this season but unfortunately for them he’s gone. Goff will do fine but I haven’t seen any clips of him making overly impressive throws in the first week of camp (I also haven’t looked for any).
