The Pittsburgh Steelers played both Russell Wilson and Justin Fields in the same game on Sunday for the first time. With Wilson as the starter, he checked out on two separate occasions to give way to Fields for three total snaps. Now that they have established the Justin Fields package, will we see both quarterbacks on the field at the same time?
“We’ll see”, Steelers OC Arthur Smith told reporters yesterday, via Ray Fittipaldo of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He prompted that question himself by bringing up his own history using multiple quarterbacks with the Tennessee Titans.
“I thought it would have been going down the stretch with Ryan [Tannehill] and Marcus [Mariota] but a different situation”, Smith said of the Steelers’ usage of Wilson and Fields. “It was 2019, we did at the end, and we did it with two quarterbacks and it was a pass Marcus had. Ryan was a wideout against Houston at the end of the year. We used it in the Kansas City game. Different situation with different players”.
Before spending three years as head coach of the Atlanta Falcons, Arthur Smith served as offensive coordinator in Tennessee in 2019-20. During the 2019 season, Tannehill played four snaps at left wide receiver, including two in the AFC Championship Game. That is the “Kansas City game” to which the current Steelers offensive coordinator refers. Mariota carried the ball one time in that game for five yards.
On Sunday, the Steelers checked Russell Wilson out of the game for Justin Fields. Fields ran the ball twice on 2nd and long, picking up 17 yards. On the other snap, he handed the ball off to RB Najee Harris. But Arthur Smith said he planned to use the package earlier in the game.
And Fields said earlier this week that the Steelers planned to use him in the Commanders game. Presumably, they would have taken Russell Wilson off the field on those occasions, but it’s hard to say. Smith said, “We’ll see” with a smirk, Fittipaldo claims, but that doesn’t mean much.
What we do know is that Smith has run a package with two quarterbacks on the field before. We also know that he said the Steelers have two starting quarterbacks in Russell Wilson and Justin Fields. It wouldn’t be wholly surprising if the next logical step for the package is having both on the field together.
In the past, when the Steelers used Le’Veon Bell as a Wildcat quarterback, they sent a displeased Ben Roethlisberger out into the flat. Considering they were willing to take Wilson off altogether for Fields, we can assume they would flank him out, as well.
It helps that Wilson and Fields genuinely seem to have a good relationship. Both of them want to start, but I can’t imagine Wilson begrudges Fields a handful of snaps here and there. And of course, whether it continues, or even expands, rests solely on whether or not the Steelers run it successfully.
