Patrick Queen thought he had his first splash play with the Pittsburgh Steelers last Sunday. Late in the first half, Los Angeles Chargers QB Justin Herbert fired down the field over the middle. While he was looking for Ladd McConkey, he found Queen instead—though he couldn’t finish the play. He blames himself and expects to finish the job the next time he forces that situation.
“If I’ve got to go into a game and cover this person and get no targets thrown at me to where I could make a play on the ball, that’s just my job to do”, Queen told Tim Benz on Breakfast with Benz this past week. He talked about his near-interception with a sense of frustration.
“Yeah, I tried to bait him”, Queen said. “The way I baited him, I thought he was trying to throw it a little bit further. So I had already leaped before the ball had even freakin’ got within five yards of me like a dumbass. But I know next time I’ll make it, though”.
Queen does have four interceptions in his career, including one against the Steelers in 2022 off Mitch Trubisky. He had one last season en route to his first All-Pro campaign. Such quality of play led to the Steelers signing him to a three-year, $41 million contract this offseason.
Despite the investment in him, Patrick Queen didn’t come out of the gate firing. He had a pretty low-impact first two weeks, but Steelers defensive coordinator Teryl Austin expressed confidence at that time.
Actually, Queen did have a shot at an interception in Week 2, though that would have been even tougher. He was near the line of scrimmage, and you have to be T.J. Watt to catch those kinds of balls. They’re deceptively hard from that range with a big man in your face.
Patrick Queen is not only adjusting to a new team and a new scheme but also a new role. With the Steelers, he is also the communicator, a role he didn’t need to fill in Baltimore. Especially over his final season and a half when he played alongside Roquan Smith.
Here, however, he is the key cog in that group, the every-down player. We are still feeling him out, and perhaps the Steelers will eventually decide that he needs to lose the green dot to play his best. Maybe one day Payton Wilson will wear it; at this point, who knows.
But while he hasn’t quite looked like an All-Pro so far, Queen is trending in the right direction. And we have to be honest with ourselves—we’re having a different conversation if he makes that interception. Of course splash plays are always critical, but one play is still one play. He did play another 45 snaps in that game—46 being a staggeringly small number of snaps for a defense to play in an entire game.
