The Pittsburgh Steelers added two talented quarterbacks to their roster in the first week of free agency this offseason with Russell Wilson and Justin Fields. Wilson has been given “pole position” to start the process out with an edge in the QB competition. While it appears to be an upgrade over their group last year, they could be playing with fire.
Carmen Vitali appeared on FS1’s Speak on Tuesday and detailed why she thinks the Steelers will stick with Wilson for the entire season.
“You know the saying, if you have two quarterbacks, you have none,” Vitali said. “You don’t wanna start this quarterback competition. And look, Mike Tomlin is the most even-keeled, just stable head coach in this league. He’s not gonna make a rash decision if Russ, maybe he struggles a little bit in the beginning. He’s not gonna try to have Justin Fields breathing down Russell Wilson’s neck.
“I was part of this in Tampa…with Jameis Winston and Ryan Fitzpatrick. It did not go well. The Bucs were 5-11 that year.”
She cited the situation with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2018, in which head coach Dirk Koetter benched one in favor of the other multiple times, and in both directions. It shakes the confidence of not only the quarterbacks but the team surrounding them if there is no clear leader in the group.
As for Tomlin, he did not have any quarterback controversies for the first 15 years of his head coaching tenure with Ben Roethlisberger in the mix. But if you recall the 2019 season, in which Roethlisberger was out for the season with his elbow injury, the quarterback management wasn’t exactly ideal. Mason Rudolph started some games, Duck Hodges started some games, and Tomlin was attempting to ride the hot hand wherever he could find it. It worked out okay, all things considered, with an 8-8 record, but it wasn’t exactly the model of stability.
Fast forward to 2022, Kenny Pickett’s rookie season, and they threw him into the fire halfway through Week 3 when Mitch Trubisky was struggling. Then again, in 2023 with Trubisky being the top backup when Pickett was injured, only to get pulled for Rudolph, who they then rode the hot hand into the playoffs despite Pickett getting healthy.
Tomlin may be stable in a lot of ways, but his QB decisions do not reflect that. It will be fascinating to see how it plays out with Wilson and Fields this season. Wilson’s pedigree probably earns him some extra leeway, but Fields has a lot of talent in his own right, and the Steelers have every reason to want to figure out what they have in him with both players being on one-year contracts.
The Steelers will have the benefit of being a much better team overall than that 2018 Buccaneers group, so hopefully, they don’t have to go down that path of nonsensical competition.
