A report Tuesday from longtime Pittsburgh Steelers’ beat writer Gerry Dulac which stated that Steelers’ offensive coordinator Arthur Smith would not let veteran quarterback and future Hall of Famer Russell Wilson change plays at the line of scrimmage late in the season after a career game against the Cincinnati Bengals on the road, is now being called “patently false” and “one-sided” by another report.
That would be CBS Sports’ Aditi Kinkhabwala. Appearing on 93.7 The Fan’s PM Show with Andrew Fillipponi and Chris Mueller, Kinkhabwala stated that Dulac’s report was very clearly one-sided and likely a ploy from Wilson’s side to drum up a market.
“It is patently false, completely inaccurate. Maybe that’s not a fair way to say it. It is one-sided. It isn’t complete. It is. You know this, Poni: journalism is about getting both sides of the story. And this is very clearly coming from one side, Kinkhabawala said of the report regarding Smith and Wilson, according to video via 93.7 The Fan on YouTube. “I’ve been hesitant from the very beginning. We go all the way back to the spring where I was very honest with all of you about what I had been told in meetings in Denver, from players, from coaches, from people who had played with him, what I had been told in Seattle, why those were two teams that had chosen to move on from Russ and what were certain things that he struggled with.
“Obviously, it wasn’t anything that the fan base necessarily wanted to hear. I’ll say this straight up: Russell Wilson is a very, very nice human being, and none of this is meant to be malicious in any way, but he’s clearly looking for another contract.”
According to the report from Dulac published Tuesday, the Steelers under Smith stopped allowing Wilson—a veteran of 13 seasons in the NFL—to change plays at the line of scrimmage as he did against the Bengals on the road in Week 13.
In that matchup, Wilson threw for 414 yards and two touchdowns, the second-highest yardage output of his career to date.
After that game, though, the Steelers beat the Cleveland Browns at home in Week 14 but then lost five straight games to close the season. The offense was listless, failing to score more than 17 points in all five games.
That led to Dulac’s report Tuesday.
“According to several sources, Smith did not want Wilson changing plays at the line of scrimmage, like he did in Cincinnati, and deviating from the game plan. Wilson’s desire to attack with the pass and throw down the field clashed with Smith’s run-first mentality, causing philosophical friction between the two.”
Throughout the season, the Steelers wanted to be a run-first team, one that was smash-mouth, punished teams, and controlled the ball. Late in the season, in that three-games-in-11-day stretch around Christmas, the Steelers tried to do just that, but they failed time and time again.
Noticeably, there were no checks at the line from Wilson like there had been earlier in the season, especially in the win over the Bengals.
The report from Dulac certainly raised eyebrows Tuesday and has generated quite a bit of buzz across the NFL landscape. Wilson is entering a pivotal offseason as a free agent, and the Steelers need an answer at quarterback.
Based on what Kinkhabwala said after calling Dulac’s report “patently false,” she also stated that it comes off as Wilson trying to drum up a market for himself, something she says he reportedly doesn’t have across the league.
“In talking to coaches and general managers around the league, there’s just not a market for his services right now,” Kinkhabwala said of Wilson entering free agency. “And so, when I read something like that, I read this as a desperate ploy to explain why the season ended the way that it did, to assign blame elsewhere, and to perhaps try to create a market here in Pittsburgh for his services. And the truth is, it’s just not true.”
You don’t hear reporters on the national level come out and call a report from a local reporter untrue, but that’s what Kinkhabwala just did. Maybe there’s some truth to that, given that it’s one-sided and comes from Wilson’s camp to try to drum up interest entering the offseason.
Maybe not, though. Only time will tell. It will be a curious month ahead leading up to free agency’s start on March 12.
