The Pittsburgh Steelers have officially announced seven outside acquisitions so far this offseason, including trades, and more are coming. Only three of those players received press conferences, however, though nobody is shocked by P Cameron Johnston’s absence. There is one glaring omissions, however, and that is QB Justin Fields. According to Bob Labriola, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for why he hasn’t held a press conference here yet.
A reader asked Labriola about the surprising absence of a Fields press conference, to which he responded in the latest Asked and Answered. “Don’t lose any sleep over that”, he said. “Justin Fields is on a Youth Football Camp tour that has taken him overseas”.
Well, that all sounds reasonable enough. Fields isn’t giving press conferences right now because he’s not currently available to do so. No less, he is participating in youth engagement activities to spread the game.
Fields is working with Gridiron Important and FlexWork Sports, participating in a football tour of Europe. For example, a social media posting from Wednesday finds him in France working with a 15-year-old quarterback named Natan Perrier.
It’s a bit hard to track down more concrete details, but he appears to be involved in a tour that includes Christian Wilkins and Bijan Robinson. FlexWork Sports ran a package that included getting Fields’ autograph earlier this month.
Labriola makes no mention of when this tour is completed, but I imagine it can’t go on too much longer. Pretty soon teams are going to have football things to do, or at least players are going to start lifting weights.
The Steelers acquire Fields via trade on March 16, at which time it appears he was already overseas. Obviously he would want to get into Pittsburgh at some point in the near future, but he’s long held youth football camps over the years, so this is nothing new for him. He likes to give back, and now he’s doing so in Europe—where the NFL is trying to expand.
We already got one quarterback press conference out of the Steelers this offseason in Russell Wison. No offense to Kyle Allen, who’s not yet officially signed, but my guess is they probably skip that opportunity.
It goes without saying, however, that Fields is a player out of whom a press conference is expected. A former top-15 draft pick at the quarterback position traded while on his rookie contract, that’s a big deal. After all, former Steelers QB Kenny Pickett already held his press conference after they traded him to the Philadelphia Eagles.
