Justin Fields has been around football long enough to understand how this works, especially when you’re a quarterback.
The player at the top of the depth chart gets hurt. The backup comes in and plays well. Controversy ensues. Noise builds. Sides are chosen.
Forgive Fields if he wants no part of it. The last thing he wants all of one game into his Pittsburgh Steelers career — a mistake-free performance while filling in for an injured Russell Wilsonlast week in Atlanta — is to get caught up in something that is entirely out of his control.
“We can have this debate on who’s the starter, who’s not the starter,” Fields said Thursday. “My job is to go out there and help the team win the game. So as long as I do that, then I feel good.”
There was plenty to feel good about against the Falcons. He’s hoping to keep the positive vibes going on Sunday when the Steelers (1-0) travel to Denver (0-1).
Pittsburgh’s trip west was poised to pit Wilson against his former team. The Broncos dumped the nine-time Pro Bowler in March, willingly eating tens of millions of dollars to do it.
Yet rather than have Wilson — who clashed with Denver coach Sean Payton — run out onto the field with the starters, it will be Fields who gets the nod while Wilson continues to rehab a calf injury he aggravated last week.
While one compelling narrative died, another could be rising in its place. Fields did all the things Steelers coach Mike Tomlin and first-year offensive coordinator Arthur Smith love against the Falcons.
He avoided turnovers, found wide receiver George Pickens downfield a handful of times and wisely used his legs to turn third downs into first downs on a handful of occasions, none bigger than late in the fourth quarter when he worked his way for 7 yards on third-and-5, forcing Atlanta to burn all three of its timeouts while setting up the last of Chris Boswell’s six field goals.
“As a still young quarterback in this league, new environment, Week 1, sudden change late, I thought he handled that really well,” Smith said.
Neither Fields, Smith nor Tomlin are in a hurry to look too far down the road. Tomlin shot down a question this week about whether Wilson will be the starter over Fields whenever the 35-year-old Super Bowl winner is ready to play.
“I’m not going to soothe you with hypothetical scenarios,” Tomlin said.
Yet if Fields puts together another solid game and Pittsburgh wins in Denver for the first time in 15 years, the noise surrounding a position that’s lacked stability since Ben Roethlisberger retired in January 2022 only figures to get louder.
Fields, who arrived in Pittsburgh in March hoping to reset his career after three wildly uneven years in Chicago, is intent on tuning it out. He said and did all the right things after he finished second to Wilson in a quarterback competition during training camp, and that approach hasn’t changed even as the circumstances have. He credited Wilson for helping him become familiar with Denver’s personnel, saying Wilson has been “great.”
While Wilson acknowledged his default setting is to play “dinged up,” he allowed that Tomlin and the training staff are trying to play it safe. Wilson dressed for practice on Thursday and did his best to get mentally prepared, standing behind Fields and Kyle Allen mimicking the pre-snap movement, feigning handoffs and making “all the throws,” something he’s done throughout his career whenever he’s been too hurt to play.
Still, that doesn’t mean it will be easy to stand on the sideline while Fields jogs out onto the turf with the starters.
Wilson said he’s built “cool relationships” with some of his former Bronco teammates, name-checking wide receiver Courtland Sutton and tackle Garrett Bolles among others.
That doesn’t mean Wilson won’t use his familiarity with Denver to help prepare Fields.
“He insight on some of the guys that are there, and how they play, and kind of what their philosophy is,” Fields said. “He’s been very helpful in terms of that stuff, and he’s always been helpful since the moment I’ve gotten here.”
The reality is, as Wilson points out repeatedly, it’s a long season. The Steelers have yet to have a quarterback make every start since the NFL expanded the schedule to 17 games in 2021. There’s a very good chance 2024 will be no different.
Yet for now, the offense goes through the 25-year-old Fields, who has shown glimpses of having all the tools necessary to make the Steelers competitive in what could be a tight AFC North. Fields understands there’s more to do, namely getting the Steelers into the end zone after they settled for field goal after field goal in Atlanta.
“I think the only thing that we have to do is stop shooting ourselves in the foot, stop with the penalties, and stay on schedule, and that’s when those touchdowns start rolling in,” Fields said.
Pittsburgh may only need one or two if the T.J. Watt-led defense can do what it did against Atlanta when it overwhelmed Atlanta. If the Steelers fly home with a win, the clamoring for Fields over an even-healthy Wilson figures to only grow louder.
It would be a welcome problem to have for a team that hasn’t been 2-0 since 2020. Fields is taking nothing for granted. Neither is Smith, who praised Fields for not looking like someone making his first start in a new system and figuring out a way to win.
“That’s what the great players do,” Smith said. “And so that was a step in the right direction.”
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