The Pittsburgh Steelers were one of the more intriguing players in the QB market. They didn’t draft high, but they did send their former #1 pick packing, shipping Kenny Pickett to Philly when he made some entitlement marks about still being the starter despite a mediocre season.
To replace Pickett, Pittsburgh turned to a pair of retreads—Russell Wilson and Justin Fields. Both were landmark busts in their previous locations, which would be Denver and Chicago, respectively. Wilson just lost a tough positional battle to a tackling sled when he tried to display his Steeler toughness bona fides, so his calf pull vaulted Fields into the starting lineup against the Texans in their preseason opener.
Justin Fields plays Fumblerooski with his center
The Ohio State product has long been a tantalizing prospect. He’s a world-class runner with a big arm, but problems with seeing the field and ball security held him back in Chicago, and both of those issues quickly surfaced in Fields’ first quarter cameo.
At this point, Fields is a veteran, so you’d expect something like the center exchange to be a simple thing. Hmm, maybe not. Fields' first fumble could have been explained away by nerves, but twice in one quarter is going to draw attention fast, especially since coach Mike Tomlin has already commented on this problem in camp.
Fields did throw some solid balls, and he did play better than Pickett, although that isn’t exactly an achievement at this point. Tomlin declared his QB’s performance a draw, saying that the fumbles “negated a lot of good things.” But Fields also set up a couple of sacks by holding the ball and looking typically confused, to the point where he nearly got decapitated by Houston’s shiny new pass rusher, Danielle Hunter.
We’ll weigh in on the Bust-o-Meter with our ridiculous snap judgment in a bit, but let’s take a quick look at what happened on the other side of the ball first.
Stroud succeeds while Field flops
While Fields was fumbling around with his future, Texans QB CJ Stroud showed what a #1 OSU quarterback pick is supposed to look like. It was somewhat surprising to even see Stroud on the field after his breakout rookie year, but Stroud quickly knocked off any imaginary rust he might have had during his cameo, which was even briefer than Fields’.
Stroud had no trouble with what Tomlin called the C-Q exchange, and his throws were decisive and accurate. He reacquainted himself with Tank Dell, too, hitting the wideout for a nifty 34-yard TD strike that offered convincing evidence that Dell’s recovery from a leg injury and a gunshot wound (!) is complete.
Overall, the game offered yet another brief glimpse into the game of QB roulette and showed why it’s such a crapshoot. The Steelers took a gamble on Pickett as a late first-round guy and came up soft; the Texans took CJ Stroud and got lucky, knowing Stroud could just as easily have been Justin Fields.
The Bust-o-Meter says…
So what does the Bust-o-Meter have to say about all this for Fields? He came in with a solid “5” as a do-over guy with Pittsburgh, but he goes up to a “6” based on his fumbling ways. We’re starting to understand why nobody wanted Fields when he came on the market, and he’ll need to do more in subsequent preseason performances to prove otherwise and avoid being a full-blown “10.”
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