How long a leash would Justin Fields have as starter if Russell Wilson returns as the backup?
Russell Wilson is clearly trending toward dressing on Sunday, but Justin Fields has remained with the Steelers’ starters. In other words, we can reasonably assume the Steelers will start Fields and dress Wilson as his backup. With Wilson only taking second-team reps, that still gives Mike Tomlin his cushion not to declare Fields the official starter.
For the first five weeks of the season, Russell Wilson only dressed as the emergency quarterback. That meant that he couldn’t even play unless two other quarterbacks went down with injuries and couldn’t return. Now he is just one snap away from playing, theoretically, whether Justin Fields suffers an injury or just struggles.
This isn’t quite Tomlin sitting Mitch Trubisky in favor of Kenny Pickett at halftime, though there are some similarities. Pickett was a rookie and Wilson is a veteran, but the Steelers added both to be their “franchise” guy. Trubisky and Fields are both the middling-pedigreed starter. But in this case, Fields wasn’t the “bridge” guy. He only started because the “franchise” guy suffered an injury.
By and large, Justin Fields has done pretty well with his five games as a starter. Many reports indicate that he has exceeded the expectations the Steelers had for him. But Russell Wilson is the guy they actively pursued and targeted to take over. They named him their starter, and the locker room voted him captain.
The only thing Wilson has done “wrong” so far is injure his calf and aggravate that injury. Fields isn’t playing lights-out football, by any means, but the Steelers also have a lot of other problems. Arguably, Fields can mitigate some of those problems better than Wilson could.
I think the length of Fields’ leash also depends on what message Tomlin means to send. If he’s fine with playing the “we needed a spark” card, he may be more willing to pull Fields in an isolated-incident scenario, where the pull doesn’t necessarily mean a formal lineup change, and he could go back to Fields the next week. But even if he does that, it immediately opens up the Russell Wilson conversation, and he is aware of that.
The Steelers’ 2024 season is underway, following another disappointing year ending in a first-round playoff loss. They have had a long offseason since the Buffalo Bills stamped them out of their misery back in January. There are positive signs, but things could jump off the rails any moment.
The biggest question hanging over the team is the quarterback question. Will Russell Wilson regain his job when he is healthy, or is Justin Fields stealing it? How will the team continue to address the depth chart, which is surprisingly still in flux?
The regular season is here, following weeks of camp and preseason games. The Steelers made numerous moves through signings and trade—and release. More than usual, they seemed comfortable creating holes, confident they can fill them. Some they managed to fill, others not so much. Now that we have so many pieces of the puzzle, however, we merely have a new set of questions to ask.
