The Pittsburgh Steelers’ decision to replace starting quarterbacks in the middle of the season wasn’t particularly well received.
Almost everyone questioned why head coach Mike Tomlin would start offseason signee Russell Wilson for the team’s Oct. 20 game against the New York Jets after Pittsburgh went 4-2 in its first six games under Justin Fields.
Mina Kimes of ESPN stated a few days prior to the Jets game, “I’ve been trying to figure out what could motivate Tomlin to make this change.” “It s one that I don t quite understand.”
Soon after, former Steelers safety Ryan Clark, Kimes’ coworker, said: I’m with her. I have no idea what prompted me to return to Russell Wilson.
Following Kimes and Clark, Marcus Spears, a former defensive end for the Dallas Cowboys, asked: I want to move it forward into considering what would happen if Russ had a poor first or second quarter. Do you return to Justin Fields right away?
Each of the three panelists had good reason to be confused.
Wilson was coming off two of his poorest seasons as a professional, finishing with an 11-19 record in the two valuable years, and he missed the start of the season due to a calf injury.
Wilson actually suffered so severely during his two seasons with the Denver Broncos that the organization had to pay a record-breaking cap penalty to let him go. The Broncos incurred the largest cap penalty in history when they released Wilson, costing them a total of $85 million against their salary cap this season and next.
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Additionally, Denver only lost dead money as a result of the migration. Wilson was cut by the Broncos this season, but they still owed him $39 million, less whatever money he may have received if he signed with another team. Wilson received $37.79 million more from the Broncos, and Pittsburgh was able to sign him for a one-year, $1.21 million contract.
So why would the Steelers bench Fields, a former first-round pick who was reportedly aware of his potential as a quarterback who was signed off the trash heap after receiving a large payout from his previous team to leave?
according to Pittsburgh’s performance during the previous six games.
Wilson has gone 5-1 since taking over in October, leading the Steelers offense to unprecedented heights and recording some of his best performances in years.
Pittsburgh is scoring 28.7 points per game with Wilson after averaging 20.7 points per game with Fields. Additionally, there has been a lot more movement in the passing game. During his six starts, Fields passed for 184.3 yards per game. In contrast, Wilson has passed for 271 yards per game this season, which is both a career high and the second-best total in the NFL.
Wilson has helped make up for it by effectively moving the ball down the field, even though he isn’t the scrambler he was during his 10-year career with the Seattle Seahawks, when he led the team to a Super Bowl and made nine Pro Bowls. In addition to having his lowest sack percentage since 2021 and his highest success rate since 2020, he is averaging a career-high number of yards per attempt.
It would have been hard to imagine Fields, who threw for less than 200 yards in four of his six starts, winning a shootout like the one in Week 13, when Wilson led the Steelers to 44 scores and 414 yards in a victory over the Cincinnati Bengals.
However, Wilson will have significant challenges in the last several weeks of the season.
Wilson will need to prove that he can compete with the league’s best in December, even though his solitary defeat came on a Thursday night against the Cleveland Browns in a snow-covered mess.
In a three-game period from December 15 to Christmas, Pittsburgh will travel to play the 10-2 Philadelphia Eagles and the division foe Baltimore Ravens before returning home to take on the AFC-leading Kansas City Chiefs. The final two games could have a significant impact on postseason seeding, and each of those games could be a possible preview for the playoffs.
Wilson has assisted the Steelers in improving their record as they enter the last five weeks of the regular season with a 9-3 record. Wilson has shown he was the ideal guy for the job, despite the fact that it may have been reasonable to wonder why Pittsburgh would hand the team over to a veteran who appeared to be nearing the end of his career.
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