Tag: steelers 2024 season

Steelers tank in ESPN’s offensive playmakers ranking

ESPN’s Bill Barnwell doesn’t give the Steelers a chance this season for big plays on offense.

In 2022, ESPN’s Bill Barnwell ranked the Pittsburgh Steelers offensive playmakers as 12th-best in the NFL. In 2023, they were 13th. Barnwell put out his 2024 rankings and we hate to break it to you but the Steelers have tanked and dropped all the way down to No. 27.

Barnwell notes in his breakdown that Pickens is essentially the only real playmaker the Steelers have and in 2023 the most consistent threat was probably backup running back Jaylen Warren.

I’m still optimistic about Pickens — even amid the real-life specter of coordinator Arthur Smith deciding to build the offense around Cordarrelle Patterson and MyCole Pruitt — but I’m wondering how he will evolve. We know he can run away from defensive backs, but is his game going to continue to revolve around low-probability contested catches on the sideline? Can his route-running command more than 10 targets in a game, something he failed to do in Year 2 with Roman Wilson and Van Jefferson as the primary wideouts behind him and Pat Freiermuth topping 50 yards in a game just once last season, it sure looks and feels like Pickens-or-bust for the Pittsburgh passing game.

Barnwell paints a fairly gloomy picture about the Steelers offense this season. There’s no doubt this offense will be plodding and methodical but we are hopeful that Freiermuth and Warren can provide a little bit of punch to the offense outside of Pickens.

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Steelers QB Justin Fields named ‘player to root for’ by NFL Network

Will Justin Fields get a fair shot at the starting quarterback job in Pittsburgh?

For some reason, the Pittsburgh Steelers decided to trade for former Chicago Bears quarterback Justin Fields after signing quarterback Russell Wilson. Wilson is a borderline Hall of Famer and did not come to the Steelers to be the backup to anyone.

This means we really don’t know if there will be a legitimate quarterback battle in training camp or not, but according to NFL writer Tom Blair is still rooting for Fields this year.

I almost made it through this entire file without naming a quarterback, but this one’s kind of unavoidable. Fields is at a career crossroads basically because he is not a clear-cut generational talent, and Chicago had an opportunity to draft someone who could be. The Bears are moving on with Caleb Williams, and more power to them. There still appears to be, uh, “meat left on that bone” in terms of what the dynamic Fields can offer, though, and I wouldn’t mind seeing another QB castoff follow the Baker Mayfield trajectory (formerly known as the Ryan Tannehill trajectory?) by re-establishing himself as a viable starter. (Don’t take this as anti-Russell Wilson sentiment, though. I root against no one.)

It’s hard to imagine the Steelers didn’t have conversations with Fields about some sort of role this season or else why would he have asked to be traded to Pittsburgh? We don’t know what that role is, but we’ve already talked about how making Fields a gadget quarterback isn’t in his best long-term interest.

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