#92 Devonte Fields
Class: Senior
Ht/Wt: 6-2/245
Position: Linebacker
Hometown: Fort Worth, TX
Twitter: @Yaboiphilly95
Thoughts: If there was one player I could pick from last year’s team to return in 2016 it would obviously be, Joshua Appleby. (You can really get lost in those eyes) If I had a second pick though, it would have been Devonte Fields, and to be honest, in the middle of the Music City Bowl I started watching him more closely assuming it would be the last half of football he played in a Cardinal uniform. As radio Mike would say...”you could not be more wrong”.
Fields came into the program last summer with a fair amount of hype, justifiably so considering he was the Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year back in 2012 as a true freshman at TCU. He showed flashes of just how special he could be back then and many expected him to pick up exactly where he left off that season. The problem was Fields wasn’t cleared to play for the Cards until late July, giving him only a little over a month to become physically prepared to play and to mentally wrap his head around the somewhat unique OLB/DE position in the Grantham defense, and to be honest, it showed. Fields even said so much himself (which makes me feel much better that he will not track me down and punch my face repeatedly). Coming out of the gate last year Fields looked lost at times, out of position, showed poor tackling, and occasionally appeared to give up on plays way to early. In my opinion, after rewatching some of the early games, I think it was really more about poorly executing the defensive assignment than it was laziness or stamina and as the season wore on, Fields seem to get it. He started to “magically” appear in the correct position, make the tackles he was missing before, and seemed to consistently get penetration into the backfield. He was becoming the player most fans thought he would be from Day 1…and it was amazing to watch. In the last 6 games Fields was nearly unblockable, he finished with 64 tackles on the year, including a team leading 22.5 for loss that placed him at 3rd in the nation, but the crazy thing is that over 70% of those TFL came in those last 6 games. If you want to up the ante even further, Fields actually got 8.5 sacks of his team leading 11(77%) in the last FOUR games. The man became possessed and was destroying all in his path, so much so that even after the slow start Fields still earned an All-ACC Honorable Mention from both the media and ACC coaches and at the Spring Game Fields was named the Defensive Player of The Year for the Cards last season. (Might want to look into expanding that trophy case Devonte.)
As most know, Fields did have offseason surgery on his shoulder in January but all indications are that things are healing as expected and he’ll back at 100% by fall camp. I usually try and reign in the hyperbole to a certain extent for these posts so you don’t feel as if I’m hyping up everyone to be world beaters when we know that isn’t the case, but it’s tough to bottle my level of excitement for what I think Fields can do this season. I think the early season struggles last year and the surprise (to me at least) of a lower draft grade have placed another chip on the shoulder of a kid who’s quickly running out of room to fit many more. We’ve seen the skills on display; we’ve seen the ability for him to takeover a game, and I think he can string together 12-13 games that look a lot more like what we saw in November and December of 2015 than September and October…..and that’s bad news for the rest of the ACC. I may not be going too far out on a limb when I say that I think he’ll have a first team All-ACC type of year but I may lose some company on said limb when I go so far as to say that he’ll be the next Louisville Cardinal to be placed on an All-American team. (Bet you feel pretty bad about wanting to punch me in the face now, huh, Devonte?)
Sweet Tweet:
Lmao I swear everyone wanna be known for something on social media
— DeVonte' Fields (@Yaboiphilly95) October 13, 2015
This is true. And unfortunately I am one of those people. Time to come clean. It’s my dream to be acknowledged as the best summer football countdown post writer on Card Chronicle. There, I said it. I know I’m shooting for the stars but momma always said “dream big baby boy”. I’m sure it will happen someday if I keep grindin’…especially since I am literally the only person in the world who falls into my very specific and personally manufactured subcategory, but let’s not get bogged down in the details.
One day momma. One day.