Stats show taking a QB at 1.01 is your best bet of Success

I put a lot of that 4th qtr stuff on horrific play-calling (we didn't have an NFL-quality play-caller this year)... it boggles the mind how bad some of those play calls were... no way they were going to help us.  The OL was busy killing drives in the 4th quarter with stupid penalties... just broke our back with drive-killing mistakes by the OL.  And then the stone-hand boys dropping passes in critical moments happened too.  I just can't blame Fields for all of that.  Did he make mistakes too?  Sure.  But Caleb would not have done one bit better (and probably worse) if he had been in those situations.  At least Fields DID make some plays out of nothing there.  Fields really has not had a coach since he came to the NFL.  I'd like to see this guy perform with real legit coaching/play-calling, an OL that isn't crapping the bed (an NFL-quality C anchoring the IOL instead of the turnstile boys) and WRs (excluding DJ) who are not a dumpster fire.

If Caleb couldn't keep from crapping the beg against college D's like ND and USC, then he'd be a bug hitting a windshield under the conditions Fields had here so far.

This Caleb stuff is gonna come down to his interviews and the interviews they do with his coaches, etc.  

From what I have read, the "emotional immaturity" rap is way overdone.  I think that will end up being much ado about nothing.  His tape and skillset are top-notch.  

When you look at that list of #1 QBs, there's 5-6 that were "consensus #1s head and shoulders above the rest"  Names like Manning, Luck, Lawrence, Burrow, Stafford, etc.  These guys were all "no doubt #1 picks" like Caleb is.  That subset is pretty impressive.  No guarantees of success of course, but the odds seem very much in your favor.

No offense, but your statement in bold makes little sense to me.  Fields' floor is a backup QB.  He's gonna get another chance to start somewhere else and probably 2 more seasons (someone will enact his 5th yr option) and after that he's gonna be demoted to backup status if he can't show substantial improvement.  His passer career rating is the same as Mitch for crying out loud so he has a LONG way to go to get to "franchise starter".  I'm quite confident that Caleb's ceiling is higher than Fields' floor...by a very large margin.

Sam Darnold was traded for a 2nd and a 4th.  Josh Rosen was traded for a 2nd.  What do you think Fields will bring in trade?  Probably a 2nd +/- a sweetener.  That should tell you what the rest of the NFL thinks of his ceiling and his floor.  

With 3 years and 40 games already in the books, by definition his floor cannot be higher than what we have already seen.  That's what floor means.  We have seen some truly awful games from Fields both this season and last--his FLOOR cannot be higher than that cuz he's already shown that.  We aren't talking about about one or two tough outings as a rookie here.  We have seen him go long stretches of time in 2022 & 2023 struggling to reach 200 yards in games.   

His floor is as a backup.  

If he gets traded like I suspect he will, it will likely be to someone like Tennessee, NE, Vegas, etc.  You think he's magically gonna have a perfect surrounding cast there?  And besides, that's a discussion of ceiling, not floor.  His floor is already known.

Just want to add that Jamarcus Russel should really be taken out of that group and not counted. No one, other than old and crazy Al Davis thought he was worth a No. 1 pick. Many didn't even think he was a 1st round pick. 

That draft is also a good example of why you need to get a high QB prospect when you can, as there is no guarantee the next draft is going to have the same quality at that position. The best QB to come out of that draft was Brady Quinn. What if we get a draft like that next year?