Coach Mike Tomlin has done some amazing things throughout his time in Pittsburgh, and is rightfully thought of as one of the best coaches in the NFL by fans and those within the league. In the last three years however, the fans within Pittsburgh like myself have begun to feel differently about how he operates the team and the recent decisions he’s made, including his most recent one of giving the Russell Wilson the starting nod in the upcoming Week 7 game against the Jets.

As almost any football fan knows, the Steelers have been absolutely abysmal on the offensive side of the ball since Big Ben’s departure. In 2022 and 2023 the Steelers averaged 18.1 and 17.9 points per game and have had arguably the worst quarterback play and play calling in the league. Now the 20.7 points per game average through six weeks thus far in 2024 is nothing to get excited over, but it’s the smaller details that prove why giving the starting job to Russ now is the wrong decision.

The first to point out is Justin Fields’ growth – Tomlin wants to win with defense, running the ball, field position, and most importantly, not turning the ball over. Well so far in 2024 Justin Fields has only turned the ball over twice. Through six games in 2023? Fields had 8. In 2022, Fields had 6 through six games. Fields passer rating is also up in 2024 at 93.9 from 85.2 and 86.3 in 2022 and 2023. He’s also on pace to throw for over 3,000 passing yards, something he’s yet to do in his career.

Now one might argue that Fields was in worse situations in Chicago, but if we think about it was he really? His offensive line was bad, but the same thing can be said about the Steelers line this year with all the injuries they’ve dealt with up front. He only had one real reciving threat in Chicago, similar to him only having Pickens this year. And of course people want to point to the coaching situation, but has it really been that much better with Arthur Smith and Mike Tomlin’s conservative play calling approach and atrocious in-game decision making and clock management? Fields has learned a new system and has dealt with Russ looking over his shoulder throughout the season and “hasn’t blinked” as Tomlin would say, and for someone who has both watched Fields throughout his career AND wanted to Russ to be the Week 1 starter, I’ve been extremely impressed with how much Fields has improved his year, especially with his overall decision making.

Moving away from statistics, the next and maybe even most important reason Fields should remain the starter is because what the change does to the team as a whole. A team needs to know who their leader is and who they’re going to rally behind, and Tomlin’s consistent wishy-washy attitude of not giving straight answers around who the quarterback is frustrates not only us as fans but also the players. I get the players love and trust Tomlin, but do we really want a repeat of last year, when he couldn’t make decision on who to start after Pickett got hurt, and we had players publicly calling for a change at the position? Or how about a repeat of 2022, where Trubisky’s awful play prompted a halftime change at the position in favor of Pickett in Week 4? For a team that has a lot of flaws offensively they can’t have things like this happen internally. Then there’s the in-game play standpoint of it – the offense needs to have rhythm, from the timing of the cadence, to the speed of the handoffs and drop backs, and of course to the types of passes being thrown, consistency in those areas is crucial for an offense to run efficiently, and changing that in the middle of the season is only going to slow things down, especially when the guy coming in has barely practiced or played in almost four months. Tomlin cited the “totality of Wilson’s resume” as the reason for the possible QB change – I’m sure that sits well with a team at 4-2 and just put up 32 points in a game, something they’ve done only three times in their last 62 games.

Finally I’ll close out with what feels like almost common sense, which is where the team is today. They go into Week 7 facing a Jets defense allowing the 2nd least yards and 7th least points in the league that bodes two of the league’s top corners, while just trading for Davante Adams on the offensive side of the ball. Offensively, the Steelers go into the matchup with a backup center making his second career start, down two other starting linemen, Broderick Jones who somehow continues to get worse, and an offensive coordinator who likes to feature third string tight ends and running backs as key passing options. I don’t even have to mention the worst receiving room in the league, but somehow with all these problems Tomlin thinks that a 35-year old Russell Wilson who can no longer move and hasn’t put up an above average quarterback season in four years is somehow the answer? I get it, a spark to the offense would be great, and who knows maybe Russ still does have some cooking left in him, but the legs of Justin Fields have been a spark to this offense that Pittsburgh hasn’t seen in a very long time, and to think that Russell Wilson can drop in out of no where and magically hit receivers that don’t get open or make something into nothing when there’s multiple free rushers just doesn’t make sense to me.

Full transparency, this is my very first article as I hope to begin my writing career and going forward I’m aiming to watch a lot more film and dig into a lot more stats to support my arguments because hey, maybe there’s views in the all-22 where Fields is missing guys that we can’t see live and that’s where Tomlin thinks Russ can change the offense. I’ve been a Steelers fan for 20 years, have missed maybe only a handful of of games, and I’ve loved Tomlin for the majority of his tenure. But it’s clearer now more than ever that Tomlin was really a product of Big Ben, not the other way around, and each season since his retirement Tomlin seems to second guess himself more and more. I won’t put the blame of drafting Pickett on him, but the lack of innovative offensive coordinator hires, awful in-game management, and lack of responsibility for so many of the poor performances we’ve seen are all things that do fall on him, and with where this team’s at now it and where it could potentially go with Fields as the quarterback it’s hard for me and the majority of fans to understand how starting Russ isn’t some form of coaching malpractice.