Playing D&D is usually not about "winning", but having a good time. In that context, a Fighter can be just as fun to play as a Wizard and not a bad choice.
In that context, he can also be a very bad choice, because he can do so much less in two of the pillars than a Wizard, but the Wizard can do just as much in the Fighter's "specialty pillar", and only an experienced D&D player will anticipate that, and only an experienced D&D player will even expect this to be an issue, because in other RPGs and CRPGs, it isn't.
Real team games (of which D&D is not one) are a pretty crap comparison, because there isn't a team game played much outside of the USA where you have this kind of disparity. The only game I can think of that makes any kind of worthwhile analogy here is American Football. Basketball is an awful analogy.
EDIT - The current situation also appears to contradict what Mearls was claiming about 5E's design, which was basically that the Fighter would be a "master of combat", and thus gimped elsewhere to account for that, and that other classes wouldn't be so masterful in combat.
If we compare the Fighter we have here to well, almost any Playtest Fighter, he's inferior in combat (by a huge margin compared to a lot of the Playtest Fighters), and equal to or inferior outside combat, and further, the Wizard is actually much better at combat than most of the Playtest Wizards, yet has not lost any power in the other pillars.
This is actually a pretty good point and it applies to 4e as well. In 5e, the Exhaustion Track appears to revolve pretty much exclusively around checks or increments related to Constitution Saving Throws or Constitution Bonus. The Fighter will naturally be more robust than other classes to resisting getting on and moving down the Exhaustion Track. GMs that make heavy use of those rules (IME you should be if you're going to be playing the system) will find their Fighters providing solid group support there. They'll also anchor Constitution Group Checks (just as 4e's Endurance).
I don't think it is a good point, actually.
Exhaustion checks seems extremely unlikely to come up in normal D&D play. Even less likely at high levels. Only a strange sort of "badly-planned, low-on-magic, wilderness excursion" game do they seem likely to be a regular thing, like, even every other session. I'd love to hear you explain how they'd come up regularly or how DMs could "make heavy use of them" without a lot of bizarre situations. Further, being the one guy who isn't affected doesn't help the group in a proactive way, just means you're slightly less screwed.
Further, Fighters don't really have that many more HP than anyone else, unless we're getting in to some kind of abuse of Second Wind. Now, if it's intended that Second Wind is abused for all it's worth, and that is the SECRET OF BALANCING FIGHTERS (TM), then, first off, I want to hear that from WotC, but second off, wow that's a weird way of balancing things.
Unless you do kind of abuse Second Wind, Fighters will barely have more HP than anyone, and anyway, people who have less HP are just more likely to attract healing from the Cleric, or burn resources like Healing Potions. Being "the last man standing" is, in my experience, in D&D, generally not very helpful. It's also completely reactionary and reactive, rather than proactive, like spells and skills.
I didn't mention it in my above post, but Endurance training, high Constitution, Fort defense, and huge number of Healing Surges helps Fighter's tremendously in nonviolent, physical conflict resolution in 4e in the same way that it does in 5e. Fighters are much less apt to be afflicted by a Disease/Condition/Hazard attack, they're much more apt to recover quickly from a Disease/Condition that actually afflicts them, and their large number of Surges means that they can withstand more environmental punishment that charges HS loss as a consequence of exposure or Skill Challenge failure.
That's all true in 4E, but all those challenges were, in my experience, relative rare in 4E, and Fighters were not at all especially good at them, ANY character with Endurance skill, High CON, decent Fort, and lots of HSes was good at them. Fighters were not the leaders in ANY of those areas. Wardens were better or equal at what, all of those things? Fightbrains too, I think.
None of that yet appears to have comparable stuff in 5E, though perhaps the PHB and DMG will combine to change that (bet diseases etc. are in the DMG, not PHB), but they'd need to be pretty common to make this an issue.
