The Pittsburgh Steelers made a valiant effort late in the game to come back against the Indianapolis Colts, but they dug themselves into too deep of a hole. They made too many mistakes, constantly dropping chances to win. Justin Fields had a good day statistically, but it would be hard to call this his best game with the Steelers. Analyst Matt Harmon of Yahoo Sports believes there’s no need to panic that Fields will be benched because of this performance, though.
“I don’t think we have to fear a quarterback change here,” Harmon said Monday on Yahoo Fantasy Forecast. “I think it would take Justin Fields being the reason they lose [for] maybe two games. It would take that for him to get benched at this point.”
On paper, Fields had a very good day. He completed 22 of his 34 passes for 312 yards and a touchdown. He also rushed for 55 yards and 2 touchdowns. Overall, it was a good day, and he was far from being the singular reason the Steelers lost. However, there were moments where he really struggled.
Until around halfway through the third quarter, Fields’ play was not inspiring. The Steelers offense as a whole only managed a field goal up to that point, with every other drive ending in disaster. The low point came when Fields scrambled backwards trying to escape a sack, only to fumble and give the Colts great field position. The call was questionable, but it was still a bad decision.
However, even though he was struggling, Fields didn’t seem to let that negativity affect him. After that fumble, he battled back, making several good throws to get the Steelers back in the game. It looked like they were going to have a real chance to win the game too, but a fumbled snap ended up killing any hope they had.
Fields took the blame for that issue on the snap, which might leave a worse impression than he deserves. He showed poise and confidence in the face of adversity, and the loss wasn’t totally his fault. Could he have played better? Yes, but that could be said about the entire team.
It wasn’t the result they wanted, but the important thing will be if the Steelers can recover from this failure. They can’t let it affect them too much mentally. There are still 13 games left in the season. This loss doesn’t have to define them. If they have a good week of work and play well against the Cowboys, then they should be back on track. There’s no reason to pull Fields yet, though. The Steelers still had a chance to win that game because of him.
