Did Justin Fields help or hurt his chances of starting for the Steelers with his preseason debut?
Justin Fields has been running the show for the Pittsburgh Steelers thus far, with Russell Wilson nursing an injured calf. That is the muscle in his leg, by the way, not a young cow. As a result, Fields started the Steelers’ preseason opener, playing the first couple of drives—but scoring no points.
On top of that, he took two sacks on possession downs and fumbled multiple center exchanges. You can assign shared blame for both, but shared blame isn’t no blame. The quarterback needs to play as error-free as possible, and unless the snap sails higher over his head than he can jump, he needs to do everything in his power to reel the ball in. Fields certainly could have done more in these key instances than he did.
But when he did operate the offense with a clean snap and a reasonable amount of protection, he did look good. He only threw one incompletion, and you can very much debate that was an incorrect call. In fact, that call stalled the final drive for Fields, and Mike Tomlin didn’t give him a chance to respond.
The thing is, Russell Wilson will be back this week, so the Justin Fields show is over. At the very least, he’s going to have to share a lot of spotlight. And the Steelers have to catch Wilson up with the reps that he has missed, on top of that.
There will still be reps to go around for Fields, including in the preseason, but arguably, his strongest window of opportunity to state his case is now closed. The preseason game was the tentpole of that audition, which has drawn mixed opinions.
Zero points isn’t good, even if Fields didn’t play much, nor are the sacks and fumbles. But we knew those things were on Fields’ resume before he got here, and one hopes they are improvable. At the same time, Wilson still has to come out and look like a starter. He may have some rust to knock off, even if he hasn’t been entirely stationary. I’m just not sure Fields helped or hurt any chance of starting based on his first in-stadium outing.
The Steelers’ 2024 season is approaching, following another disappointing year that culminated in a first-round playoff loss. The only change-up in the annual formula lately is whether they exit early or miss the playoffs altogether. They have had a long offseason since the Buffalo Bills stamped them out of their misery back in January.
The biggest question hanging over the team is the quarterback question. Does Russell Wilson make them a Super Bowl-caliber team, or are they wasting a year? How will the team continue to address the depth chart?
The Steelers are in training camp and the preseason and the 2024 season is coming into focus. They made numerous moves through signings and trade—and release. More than usual, they seemed comfortable creating holes, confident they can fill them. Some they managed to fill, others not so much. Now that we have so many pieces of the puzzle, however, we merely have a new set of questions to ask.
