The Pittsburgh Steelers spent a lot of time in the early 2010s working on the read-option, but not on offense as they had Ben Roethlisberger in his prime and he wasn’t exactly that type of quarterback. They spent time figuring out the best way to approach the play as a defense tasked with shutting it down. The play took the league by storm following the emergence of Robert Griffin III, Russell Wilson, Colin Kaepernick, and others and many teams started to try to emulate their success and implement their own versions of the play.
Defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau called it “just one more gun that we gotta be able to silence” in an interview at the time.
Fast forward to recent years, and Mike Tomlin has repeatedly spoken about the importance of quarterback mobility in the ever-evolving NFL landscape. Kenny Pickett had some of those abilities, but the Steelers never really made use of his mobility. This offseason, they landed two quarterbacks capable of running the play in Russell Wilson and Justin Fields, and by the early looks at OTAs, we can expect to see some of it in the offense in 2024. Yardbarker’s Aaron Becker posted Fields running the play at practice on X.
Some QB Justin Fields read option on Day 3 of #Steelers OTAs. pic.twitter.com/Lmh0hyS8E2
— Aaron Becker (@Aaron_M_Becker) May 23, 2024
The play is pretty simple for the most part. The quarterback reads the end man on the line of scrimmage, either the defensive end or the outside linebacker, and either pulls the ball to run it himself or hands it off to the running back depending on the read.
Here is Fields running it in an actual game scenario via Benjamin Solak on X.
Lions do a nice job defending read option with the scrape exchange. Jack Campbell has Justin Fields dead to rights in space.
Until he doesn’t. pic.twitter.com/7AwhYcmLS7
— Benjamin Solak (@BenjaminSolak) November 20, 2023
If indeed Fields does end up getting used in special packages off the bench, we can expect to see some of this from him. Back in 2022, he gained 1,143 yards on the ground in 15 games. That is more than Najee Harris has been able to gain in each of the last two seasons in 17 games, for reference. Fields is a weapon with his legs with some growth to do as a passer. Because of how electric he is as an athlete with the ball in his hands, the Steelers would be well-served to use those talents even if Fields comes off the bench.
