Justin Fields will play for the Pittsburgh Steelers Saturday afternoon, although he will not start. How much he plays, and how soon, we don’t know, nor does he. Head coach Mike Tomlin will make that decision, and it probably won’t come until some point during the game. They still need to see more from Russell Wilson, who missed the first preseason game, and that could mean sacrificing a longer, higher-quality look at Fields.
“I’m not really going into any game expecting” anything, Justin Fields said Thursday about the preseason finale. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I kind of like it that way. I don’t like to say, ‘I’m going to get this amount of drives’.
With Wilson nursing a calf injury, Fields started the first preseason game, but he only played a couple drives. Last week, he came in after Wilson’s five drives and played the rest of the game. Neither of them fared well, the Steelers scoring a whopping three points, so neither evaluation is complete.
Tomlin already announced that Wilson will start the game, but that is as far as he would go. He did acknowledge that everyone who is healthy will play but also that they may move on from starters quickly. That suggests Wilson might not play long—but Fields might not either. With no fourth preseason game, this is the time for end-of-roster players to win jobs.
So will all of that leave any snaps left over with first-team personnel for Justin Fields? “I mean, of course it’s something that I want, but at the end of the day, I don’t make those decisions – that’s above my pay grade”, he said. “So yeah, I think that’s a question for Coach”.
Russell Wilson is a Super Bowl champion, while Justin Fields is a super athletic former first-round pick. The Steelers signed Wilson as a street free agent after the Denver Broncos released him and his bloated contract. After Kenny Pickett requested a trade, the Steelers traded for Fields. Everybody seems to have a different opinion about whether they are in a competition or not.
When asked where he feels he might be in said competition, Fields wisely said only that that is a question for Tomlin. The aforementioned did say on Thursday that things are still status quo in the pecking order, but he didn’t say that can’t change during the final preseason game.
Barring a spectacular failure on Wilson’s part or a stunning performance by Fields, however, it’s hard to imagine the Steelers changing course before the season at this point. Wilson would have to look helpless behind a dismal offensive line, I think, to have this conversation seriously.
But given how the line has played so far in the preseason, that’s not exactly an impossibility. Wilson took three sacks last week, and Fields definitely looked like a more navigable option behind shaky protection. But he still only produced three points, and that’s where you have to make your mark.
