Coming off Organized Team Activities, where he expectedly received quite a few reps, all eyes are now on Justin Fields. Entering mandatory minicamp this week for the Pittsburgh Steelers, the former No. 11 overall draft pick pushes forward in the QB competition with Russell Wilson.
For many, it’s not a competition: Wilson is the starter and will be for the season, barring injury or catastrophically poor play.
But Fields doesn’t want to hear that and doesn’t have the mindset of sitting on the bench all season.
ESPN’s Brooke Pryor believes that the biggest storyline to watch entering minicamp is seeing if Fields can push his way into some first-team reps, inserting himself into the QB competition with Wilson.
“As Mike Tomlin has often refrained, Russell Wilson is in ‘pole position’ in the competition between the two newly acquired quarterbacks,” Pryor writes. “The true competition will undoubtedly ramp up later this summer in training camp, but mandatory minicamp is the next significant opportunity to evaluate the two signal-callers in offensive coordinator Arthur Smith’s system.
“While the Steelers traded for Fields with the intention of the former first-round pick learning from Wilson, Fields expressed a desire to compete with the former Broncos quarterback and said last month he’s not in the mindset of sitting on the bench all season.”
It’s well-known that Wilson, who the Steelers signed to a one-year deal in free agency, is in “pole position” entering offseason workouts as the starting quarterback for the Steelers. He has the resume that garners that respect, considering he’s a future Hall of Famer.
Fields looks up to and models his game after Wilson, but that isn’t going to hold him back from competing for the starting job. Fields got quite a bit of reps in OTAs, which was expected based on a report from ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler before the start of OTAs. Now the attention shifts to minicamp.
Minicamp is the true ramp-up to training camp as position battles, pecking orders on the depth chart, and more start to take some shape before the Steelers descend on Latrobe in late July. Though it’s still just football in helmets, minicamp is an important time for the Steelers.
It will be doubly important as the offensive pieces get to work further in new offensive coordinator Arthur Smith’s scheme. That includes the quarterbacks. Wilson and Fields have seemingly both taken well to the offense and have stepped up as leaders, but minicamp is another big opportunity for the pair.
Fields is likely going to get some first-team reps in minicamp at an appropriate time, as Tomlin likes to say. Fields will get an opportunity to compete, no doubt. We’ll see if part of that competition occurs in minicamp this week.
If it does, the talking points will escalate regarding the Wilson/Fields dynamic in the quarterback room.
