Justin Fields wasn’t yet the starter at Ohio State, and Dwayne Haskins wasn’t yet a first-round pick (not officially, anyway), but Fields can remember the boost of confidence Haskins tried to give him as they walked down the tunnel together for warmups before the Buckeyes’ spring game in 2019.
, Fields recalls Haskins telling him.
Both had the world in front of them at the time. Twelve days later, Haskins would be drafted No. 15 by his hometown team in Washington. A few months after that, Fields would seize the starting job in Columbus, and wound up finishing the year first in New York for the Heisman ceremony, then in Arizona for the College Football Playoff.
What Haskins meant on that April day, really, was that the shot to lead a loaded Ohio State roster into 2019 was there for Fields. What neither guy may have recognized at the time was that Haskins was handing him a legacy.
“I’m not gonna lie, he kind of did start something,” Fields said while driving home from the Bears’ offseason program on Tuesday. “You can say he did. We’ll never know if I’d have gone to Ohio State if he wasn’t there, but you give him credit for starting something. I was thinking about that the other day, and I saw something online—before him, there really wasn’t an elite passer at Ohio State for years before.
“I think he started that elite passing group with, of course, him, me and now C.J. [Stroud].”
Haskins tragically died Saturday, at 24. Rightfully, much of the focus since has been on the genuine, positive, always-smiling personality that Haskins had, and the way he connected with so many of those around him.
But even if he never got to turn the corner as a pro, he will leave a legacy as a player.
And Fields is a pretty good illustration of it, as is Stroud, and as will be, in all likelihood, whoever comes after Stroud. Because you can argue that Haskins didn’t just affect the direction of Ohio State football, which he undoubtedly did. He also affected the way the game was played in the Big Ten as a whole. The numbers make that clear.
• His 50 TD passes in 2018 broke a 20-year-old conference record, set by Drew Brees at Purdue. And it broke Brees’s record (38) by 11.
• Haskins’s 4,939 yards of total offense that fall broke Denard Robinson’s eight-year-old record (4,272) by nearly 700 yards.
• Haskins became the first first-round QB from Ohio State in 37 years.
It wasn’t just that it happened, either. It was the way it , too
“It was just how live his arm was,” Fields said. “He’s got a whip. The ball came off his hand like nobody else; it’s just how much of a natural thrower he was, and how live his arm was.”
And when Fields was considering transferring after spending his freshman year at Georgia, he got to see some tape of it. He’d also had met Haskins, if only in passing, working with their shared quarterback coach, Quincy Avery, in Atlanta. But truth be told, at that point—in part, because, as Fields says, “I’m kind of an introvert. … When I first meet a person, I’m not quick to ask them a lot of questions”—there really wasn’t a connection between the two.
Plenty of factors played into Fields deciding to go to Ohio State. The way Haskins and the offense exploded under coordinator-turned-head-coach Ryan Day in 2018 was a big one, of course, as was his opportunity to start. Who Haskins was wasn’t, until Fields got to meet Haskins on his official visit, with his decision to become a Buckeye all but made.
Even though Haskins had already declared for the draft, he played host for Fields’s weekend on campus, introducing him to his girlfriend, taking him to a basketball game with ex-coach Urban Meyer, and showing him around a campus he never got to see as a prep recruit.
“If I’m gonna be honest with you, before that, we kind of talked, but we didn’t really talk that much,” Fields said. “It seemed like when I was there, we’d known each other our whole lives. He was so cool, so welcoming. I think that’s where our relationship turned into a more personal relationship, us getting to know each other more. And he became like a big brother to me.”
So it was that they were there in the tunnel before the spring game, with Haskins passing the baton, and so it continued with little things over the course of Fields’s starry career in Columbus.
“Simple texts—, , or ,” Fields said. “Little stuff here and there. He wanted to see everyone succeed. He wanted to see everyone be their best.”
Fields and Haskins last saw each other in November, when the former’s Bears played the latter’s Steelers on a Monday night. The interaction came before kickoff in, again, the tunnel, and even though Pittsburgh won, the Bears’ rookie pushed the Steelers to the edge with a breakout performance in the second half.
Five months later, he got the tragic news the same way so many other people did, waking up on Saturday morning and seeing it on the internet. “After I saw it, I kind of froze, I was like, “ Fields said. “It still hasn’t hit me. I still don’t believe it. It’s still hard to grasp.”
And understandably, it’s still tough for Fields to find the right way to contextualize feelings that remain pretty raw. But he knows what he’ll remember about his friend, and what his friend left for him to carry on is a part of that.
“It’s just how positive he was,” Fields said. “Everyone he met, I don’t think he disliked anybody, he always had that positive attitude, always wanted to get better, he was always working hard, it was just … it was tough to see. Really, it puts it in perspective. It shows you that tomorrow isn’t promised. Anything can happen, His impact on everybody he came in contact with, when he was here, on earth, that’s the biggest thing I take.
“It's the impact he had on not only me, but even C.J., that whole line of quarterbacks, and all his teammates he played with.”
As we’ve heard the last few days, it’s off the field of course. But there’s a lot he left on the field, too, for guys like Fields, and now Stroud to chase.
And with that, let’s get to your mail for the week …
