The Pittsburgh Steelers may have scored a touchdown in Week 2 against the Denver Broncos, but their offensive effort may have been even uglier than it was in Week 1. That’s a direct result of all the penalties they committed. Mike Tomlin was not happy after the game with those mistakes, and he revealed Tuesday that he challenged Justin Fields to do something about them.
“At some point in the game, I went up to [Fields], I told him to challenge his unit in terms of cleaning up their play so we could get out of the stadium and end the game,” Tomlin said during his weekly press conference via the team’s YouTube channel. “I asked him to do it in his own voice, in his own words, but those are some of things that you ask a quarterback to do.
“It’s not fun or realistic to fake that, so it’s just really good to be in in-game circumstances and get an opportunity to work together in the ways that coaches and leaders have to do in an effort to land the plane.”
Fields may not be a captain, but as a starting quarterback, he is a leader, so it makes sense that Tomlin would ask him to challenge the offense. That was also probably a chance for Tomlin to gauge Fields’ leadership abilities.
Russell Wilson’s leadership had been on full display since he got to Pittsburgh, but Fields seems to be a little less vocal. With Fields playing well — or at least well enough — Tomlin will likely have a tough time benching him once Wilson is healthy. If he does stick with Fields, situations like this one he’s describing could be frequent occurrences. Therefore, he probably wanted to see how Fields would react in that situation.
Fields is a much younger player than Wilson, so there are fewer examples in the NFL as a whole of his leadership. Wilson has won a Super Bowl and done just about everything an NFL quarterback can do. Tomlin wants the Steelers to be a playoff team, and if Fields is going to start in the postseason, Tomlin needs to know he can trust him to lead the offense in uncomfortable situations.
It’s unfortunate that it’s unclear when Tomlin gave this assignment to Fields though. There’s really no telling when Fields spoke to the offense or if it had any effect. However, the Steelers did secure victory, and they held strong to end the game, so perhaps Fields did manage to steady the offense. With Fields likely starting this week, we’ll see if he gets challenged by Tomlin again.
