Apparent market value for Justin Fields is downright ridiculous

One of the most interesting players in the NFL is Justin Fields, who is now on the Pittsburgh Steelers, and you won't believe what one website has his market value at. My jaw hit the floor when I became aware of it. Spotrac.com is a website chock full of NFL-related goodness, among other sports. They keep running tallies of NFL free agents, the ins and outs of contracts, and everything in between.

One of their cooler features is giving certain players a "Market Value" on a new contract. Most of the time the Market Value they assign is for the more notable players and not assigned to every single one. Well, they gave one to Justin Fields, and you won't believe what they have set his market value at on a contract extension:

Six years, $283,184,712

Average Salary: $47,197,452

Yes, this is the market value that they have assigned for Justin Fields. Man, this is just mind-blowing stuff. And perhaps even worse, Spotrac does use a distinct method for determining a player's market value. They have four main headlines with text underneath that describes each one:

COMPARABLE PLAYERS - "We've selected the following players based on their age, contract status, and statistical production to compare Justin Fields to."

BASE CALCULATED VALUE - "After adjusting the above contracts as if signed at Fields's current age (25), a linear regression is performed, providing us with the following initial value."

STATISTICAL COMPARISONS - "Now we'll compare our variables and Fields statistically over the two seasons prior to their signing. In this case we're analyzing: Games Played %, Passing Yards, Passing Touchdowns, Passing Interceptions, Completion %, Passer Rating, Rushing Yards, Rating"

CALCULATED MARKET VALUE: JUSTIN FIELDS - "After applying our Prime % figures into our base calculated value, we're given two values. The average of these values becomes our current calculated market value."

So, they aren't just throwing around random numbers willy-nilly, but man, it'd be unfathomable to see an NFL team pay Justin Fields this much unless he someone broke out and established himself among the elites in the NFL. For Fields, he's not proven to be a franchise QB in the NFL through the first three seasons, in which he's played in 40 total games, starting 38 of them.

Perhaps new scenery in Pittsburgh and likely being the QB2 to Russell Wilson could ignite whatever might be there for the former Chicago Bear.