Until about two hours before the Steelers kicked off their 2024 season, the starting quarterback was up in the air. Russell Wilson ultimately sat due to calf tightness experienced on Thursday, which meant Justin Fields got his chance to start.
Wilson reportedly told the team he could play, but the team doctors and decision makers wanted to be cautious.
Mike Tomlin explained the decision-making process that went into sitting Wilson.
“It’s really not a long, drawn-out process,” Tomlin said in a video posted on the Steelers’ YouTube page. “I’d rather deal with short-term misery, to be quite honest with you. We’re in Week 1. There’s a lot of ball out in front of us. I just thought it was appropriate to put the healthy guys on the field. I felt really good about both quarterbacks. I was very clear to you guys when I named Russ the starter, how comfortable I was with both quarterbacks.”
This is a very similar approach to the one the team took with Wilson when he injured his calf at the start of training camp. Wilson told the media that he would have been practicing if it were up to him, but Tomlin wanted to prevent a small issue from becoming a large one.
The only issue is, that last injury held him out for the better part of three weeks. He slowly worked his way back in at practice, but was even held out of the preseason opener. And even with the extra rest, he tweaked his calf again almost a month and a half later. So what does that mean for the next two or three weeks of the regular season?
Wilson was the emergency third quarterback, so if both Fields and Kyle Allen got injured, it was possible Wilson could have played. That didn’t happen, but the fact that he was even designated as that means the injury isn’t viewed as major, or they would have just ruled him out.
To nobody’s surprise, Tomlin was immediately asked about Wilson being the QB1 once he is healthy enough to return. Also to nobody’s surprise, Tomlin declined to answer and deferred to Tuesday’s press conference.
Fields didn’t play lights-out, but he played a fairly clean game overall and made enough big plays to get the Steelers in field goal range several times. He did take a couple tough sacks while trying to extend plays, but you have to take the good with the bad when it comes to his athletic talents.
So now the quarterback controversy will continue for another week, at least in the eyes of the media. We will likely have a lot of the same conversations leading up to the Steelers next game in Denver.
