Player: QB Justin Fields
Stock Value: Sold
Reasoning: Arguably the Steelers’ biggest move of the offseason so far is letting Justin Fields walk in free agency. Whether the cause was their lack of conviction in him or their stinginess with guarantees, we’ll likely never know. In the meantime, we await what their Plan B is—or C, or D, or whatever letter we’re on now. F, for some reason, feels like a fitting stopping point.
Despite the Russellmania that once consumed the Steelers organization—or at least HC Mike Tomlin, they set their sights instead on re-signing Justin Fields. It stands to reason that if the Steelers really wanted Wilson back, he would be under contract already.
Rather, it doesn’t sound like they even have an offer on the table for him. The Steelers did make an offer to Justin Fields, though, and now they have one to Aaron Rodgers. We don’t know the details of their offer to Fields, but we know he didn’t accept it.
Fields ultimately signed a two-year, $40 million contract with the Jets, including $30 million guaranteed. That deal includes $10 million guaranteed in the second year of the deal, something the Steelers very rarely do. They do make exceptions for franchise quarterback and other irreplaceable parts. But the fact that the Steelers didn’t offer second-year guarantees to Fields shows they viewed him as expendable.
And they weren’t wrong to, let’s be clear about that, or at least, it is a reasonable deduction to make. Nothing that Justin Fields did with the Steelers in 2024 predicts success with the Jets in 2025. He can run around, and he can make some throws. He showed in Pittsburgh that he can even play cleaner and make fewer mistakes.
But he still exhibited the same problems that have always haunted him, including a lot of really basic mechanical and diagnostic issues that you simply cannot feel comfortable having at the quarterback position. The Steelers watched Fields botch a series of center exchanges, miss open reads, drift into sacks, and fail to scan the field.
Do Jets fans feel good about the ability of their coaching staff to turn Fields into a cerebral quarterback? That’s not to say that he isn’t an intelligent player, but he doesn’t seem to process what he’s seeking quickly. And in the NFL, it’s more important be quick on your mental “feet” than with your actual feet. That’s one of the key reasons the Steelers weren’t willing to sweeten the pot, I’m sure.
With the new league year underway and the Steelers turning their roster over, it’s once again time to “take stock”. It took a while, but we finally saw some of that change the team talked about after the season ended. Certainly, the move to trade for WR DK Metcalf qualifies as a change, not to mention the accompanying contract.
There is still a long way to go before we know what this Steelers team is going to look like. Once the dust settles on free agency, we turn our attention to the draft, and so on. What other moves might the team make, perhaps unexpected acquisitions or departures? If they traded for one player, they could certainly trade for another, or trade one away. This is a Steelers team starving for postseason success, but how desperate are they for a playoff win in 2025?
