As a fan, it is easy to get carried away assuming that players and coaches have zero lives outside of football. In some cases, that isn’t far from the truth. Russell Wilson and Arthur Smith seem to be obsessed with making the Pittsburgh Steelers’ offense as good as it can be, and that work is paying off.
“Arthur Smith says he puts in long hours with Russell Wilson on Friday nights going through the game plan,” ESPN’s Brooke Pryor wrote on X during Smith’s weekly press conference. “He said his wife FaceTimes him sometimes making sure he’s not out somewhere on the South Side, and he’ll turn the camera and show her that Russ is with him.”
Smith has already proven himself in the NFL world, but it is impressive as heck to me that a man coming from FedEx fortune works as hard as he does and puts in the extra hours to be great. He very clearly loves what he does.
That is probably what has made his union with Russell Wilson so great. Wilson has talked at length about his obsession with football. Before Wilson even signed with the Steelers, he had formed a strong bond with Smith. The two reportedly talked football for hours during his exploratory visit to Pittsburgh while he was weighing his options.
Both Wilson and Smith have a lot to prove. Though they have both climbed to the highest level of their respective professions, they are just a handful of months removed from effectively being fired from their previous positions. Wilson has a Hall of Fame legacy to protect while Smith likely wants to be back among the ranks of NFL head coaches some day.
This mutual obsession has already paid off in a big way for the Steelers, and it should only continue to grow from here.
Since Wilson entered the starting lineup, the Steelers have averaged 30.3 points and 382.3 yards in three games. Stacked up against the rest of the NFL, that would be the fourth-best total offense and the third-best scoring offense.
The Steelers are one more solid game away from being a top 10 scoring offense this season, and that is after a very slow start in that category.
With just three total starts working together so far, it is reasonable to expect the offense to continue to trend upwards. It seems unlikely that they have already found their ceiling. Rest assured that both of them are hard at work after hours—even on Friday nights—to figure out ways to be as good as they can possibly be together.
