Russell Wilson is a Super Bowl-winning quarterback who has played in over 200 NFL games, but you wouldn’t know it from the reaction to Mike Tomlin starting Wilson over Justin Fields.
Fields, who was leading the league in throws short of the sticks at 72%, has had an unprecedented amount of online support since he was drafted. Many Steelers fans were unhappy with the change despite Pittsburgh’s offense throwing for under 140 yards in four of the first six games, the most such games in the NFL.
Here were some headlines before Wilson’s Steelers debut in Week 7:
Behind the Steel Curtain: Mike Tomlin is set to give the veteran quarterback the keys to the offense, but are we sure the veteran isn’t cooked?
Steelers Depot: For Mike Tomlin’s sake, Russell Wilson better be great
And one Steelers fan summed up the most popular argument being made to stick with Fields, even by those who have spent years laughing off anyone who brings up “QB Winz”:
“I see a 4-2 record with Fields, I don’t think they should switch out right now,” Jeff Allen, a Steelers fan from Bulls Gap, Tenn, said.
Even Albert Breer chimed in with a report that “a ton of Steelers don’t want Wilson to start”.
It’s a strange situation in which one quarterback has an unprecedented amount of hate for a potential Hall of Famer and the other has an unprecedented amount of support for someone who said himself last week that he didn’t play well enough to keep the job.
One 37-15 win later with a season-high for total yards, Wilson is winning fans over for the second time in his career.
Russell Wilson’s first start in 10 months
Expecting to rebuild his career in Pittsburgh, Wilson suffered a calf injury in training camp that cost him three weeks of practice, so Week 7 was in many ways his preseason debut. Playing to boos in front of a home crowd, Wilson was given no grace in a shaky first half against the Jets, his first football action since his last game with the Broncos in December.
A few (admittedly ugly) throws and three first quarter punts by the Steelers later, anyone who was against the change was all the more happy to scream from the rooftops that they were right and Mike Tomlin — the respected head coach — was obviously wrong.
What a difference the rust makes.
The Steelers scored on each of their last five drives, including four touchdowns and three drives of 75+ yards. Wilson was 2-of-6 for 19 yards in the first quarter, but then went 18-of-23 for 245 yards and 2 touchdowns the rest of the way.
Yet it was a performance that very few people claimed they wanted to see before the game other than Tomlin, Wilson, and Justin Fields. After the game, the tune had changed considerably from “Tomlin is hurting the Steelers with this move”…
To “Of course Wilson gives the Steelers a better chance to win, we always knew that”.
The media changed tunes faster than Tomlin changed quarterbacks, all because of an undeniable performance by Wilson that was easy to see coming if not for the fact that the veteran was Wilson and the other option was Fields. If the other option was Zach Wilson, Mac Jones, or Trey Lance — or even if the other option was still Kenny Pickett — there would have been no dropped jaws.
Fields is protecting the ball like he never has before and the Steelers went 4-2 in his starts. But a year ago Pickett threw only 4 interceptions in 12 starts and Pittsburgh went 7-5 in those games en route to making the playoffs, and nobody thought that Pickett should continue to start for an NFL team.
If the Steelers had Wilson last season, would they have even traded for Fields?
Russell Wilson analytics
In his first start of the season, Wilson posted +0.24 EPA per dropback, which is tied for the 41st-best single game performance of the season. He did this while being under pressure on 42% of his dropbacks and without having played in a game for 10 months, which is exactly why teams covet the experience they get from veterans like Joe Flacco, Andy Dalton, and Wilson. Even if those names don’t inspire as much confidence as they did in their primes, the Colts, Panthers, and Steelers were grateful to have second options that know how to prepare for Sundays.
The Steelers were also able to finally run plays from under center again: Wilson was under center on 41 of 66 snaps and on play action passes from under center, Wilson went 8-of-9 for 150 yards; per Next Gen Stats, that’s the most yards by a Steelers quarterback off of play action since at least 2016. Wilson’s total of 264 passing yards is the most ever by a QB in his Steelers debut.
This was the game that Steelers fans needed, from the quarterback who few of them would admit they wanted.
But being overlooked, and at times ridiculed, is something that Wilson has dealt with in his career before. It has never deterred him. If anything, doubt was the missing ingredient Wilson needed to motivate him.
