Russell Wilson is playing for the Pittsburgh Steelers in their final exhibition game. Because, well, it’s quite necessary at this point.
“We’re playing,” Wilson told reporters. “Yeah, we’re all playing.”
I’d add an addendum to that statement: Wilson is playing for his starting job. Both for the first week of the regular season and likely every week after that, too.
This is where the Steelers are in a starting quarterback decision that has stretched on far longer than the franchise initially intended when camp started in July. In some ways, it’s the predictable quandary that we all expected between Wilson and Justin Fields. It’s what happens when you pit a 35-year-old quarterback with signs of decline against a 25-year-old who offers special athletic traits and a still-reachable ceiling. You set yourself up for a debate — whether it’s what you intended or not.
Maybe the Steelers always knew this was coming. Surely, there were plenty of signs after Wilson was signed as a free agent and Fields was acquired in a trade with the Chicago Bears. For every story you heard about head coach Mike Tomlin simply wanting a steady veteran who could run an offense at an above-average clip, there was another story about the very lofty draft opinion the Steelers had of Fields. Throw in the contract realities — with neither having a deal beyond 2024 — and it had all the makings of a cloaked competition, no matter what the organization said publicly.
And now here we are. With a competition that at least seems a little less cloaked, thanks to a calf injury that kept Wilson out of an extended period at the start of training camp, giving Fields just enough time to showcase to the staff that he still has the special traits that have long been impressive. All running into an intersection that has Pittsburgh hoping for one of two outcomes: Either Wilson finally puts it together in the final exhibition game and showcases the steady veteran traits that got him a contract; or Fields once again gets a little bit better as a passer while remaining dynamic as a runner, finally earning the regular season start that seemed out of reach two months ago.
One of the two has to happen for the Steelers to meaningfully move forward at the quarterback spot. Which, to be clear, is the intention of this entire endeavor. When I was in camp with the Steelers last week, it was made clear to me that the team views its 2025 quarterback resolution as being on the 2024 roster. Barring something catastrophic, Pittsburgh expects one of these guys to earn another contract and be the team’s starter next season.
The division between the two? It’s going to come down to who can showcase an ability to win games rather than just manage them. Thus far, Wilson has looked like little more than an average game manager — still needing to show consistency in his decisions, deep ball accuracy and an ability to finish drives. Conversely, Fields has yet to show he can win games by being both dynamic as a runner and also mistake-free as passer. Or at the very least, he has to illustrate that his running ability can make up for a passing acumen that is not fully developed. Neither has really put their stamp on the job. Both will have a chance Saturday agains the Detroit Lions in the preseason finale.
If they can’t do it by then, this will be a quarterback derby defined by regular season wins and losses, not to mention margins of error that will be more thin than anything in the last five weeks. Those are real stakes, and they make this a preseason game worth watching.
Other odds and ends from the training camp tour …
There is a lot of buzz, and some consternation, about the exploding wide receiver market — including the bookend impact of the Detroit Lions’ Amon-Ra St. Brown deal vs. the Minnesota Vikings’ Justin Jefferson contract
It was hard to go almost anywhere over the last four weeks and not get some form of an opinion on the wide receiver money exploding in the offseason. Everyone has a rationale for how the league got to the point of $25 million to $35 million average per year being the new wheelhouse for good-to-great wideouts. Some view it as a natural rotation into what is most important in the league (accentuating QB value). Others point at a wave of general managers, coaches and owners who care less about the decades-old “rule of four” which historically kept bank-breaking salaries in the hands of good-to-great quarterbacks, elite offensive tackles, DPOY-caliber edge rushers or lockdown “traveling” cornerbacks.
Three deals come up most often in the conversations about wideout money. Two are often cited as the “launch” deals of Tyreek Hill (after he was dealt to the Miami Dolphins) and Davante Adams (after he was dealt to the Las Vegas Raiders). The third is the Detroit Lions’ contract extension for wideout Amon-Ra St. Brown, which many clubs have deemed as one that will change the dynamics for everyone involved. Despite St. Brown being a first-team All-Pro in 2023, it’s clear that several teams see him as a very-good-but-not-exceptional player who ultimately landed elite money due to some unexpected leverage. Specifically, a handful of teams believe the reason St. Brown landed elite money without a drawn-out negotiation was because ownership wanted the extension done before Detroit hosted the NFL Draft last April (Brown’s extension was announced on the doorstep of that event). That’s a real perception in some corners of the NFL.
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Whatever the factors were, the consensus feel is that Hill and Adams kicked open a door to massive No. 1 wideout money. After that, St. Brown raised the second-tier floor, while Jefferson raised the first-tier ceiling. Those bookends have weighed in different ways on the dragging negotiations with Brandon Aiyuk, CeeDee Lamb and Ja’Marr Chase, not to mention a multitude of future receiver deals that are on the horizon. Aiyuk’s deal was definitely complicated by the St. Brown contract, while I think the Dallas Cowboys were shocked by the Jefferson deal and how it impacted their talks with Lamb. As for Chase, I think the Cincinnati Bengals are having a hard time wrapping their head around making Chase the highest-paid non-quarterback in the NFL, which is what multiple teams think it’s going to take to get that extension done.
As one general manager put it, “We’re to the point where every single good receiver just starts at 25 [million] now, and the best ones are heading toward 40 [million]. You can do those deals, but you’re going to lose one or two other starters in the process. It’s not a 1-for-1 tradeoff. Sometimes it’s a 2-for-1. So you have to ask yourself, do I want this receiver, or would I rather keep these other two starters and try to find a younger and cheaper receiver in the draft or a trade?”
Groused one head coach, “If you’re paying [a receiver] $30 to $35 million a season, they better walk on water.”
I don’t know when, but I think this will eventually result in an extremely active — and extremely polarized — approach to retaining wideouts. There are so many receivers coming into the league in seemingly every draft, it feels like teams will be prone to trying to push more of them later into their rookie contracts, then either using a franchise tag on them or trading them before a monster extension becomes necessary. One interesting thing to watch will be what happens when a wideout lands a huge extension and then doesn’t remotely live up to it. That’s the kind of pressure point that helps get coaches and general managers fired.
If the WR market is getting too rich, where is the value?
There aren’t a lot of truly multi-dimensional tight ends in the league right now, but there seems to be an influx of more and more of them on the horizon. Some decision makers and coaches pointed at tight ends — along with centers and cornerbacks — as being spots that smart teams can still get good levels of talent at prices that haven’t kept pace with other positions. One general manager also remarked that there’s an odd disconnect between highly paid guards and quality centers that doesn’t make a lot of sense when it comes to the value of their contributions.
About that CB market explosion that hasn’t happened yet … Patrick Surtain II and Sauce Gardner shall lead them
We’ve noted it before — the disparity between Tier 1 one wide receiver pay and Tier 1 cornerback pay is wildly out of joint. As it now stands, the top five highest-paid corners (in APY) are at a clip of just over $20 million per season. The top five wideouts? One general manager said he thinks the average per year of the top five wideouts will settle in around $33 million once the deals for Chase and Lamb are done. That’s a wild spread between two positions that run head-to-head in a very measurable way. What it signals is that a run of “catch-up” deals is likely coming at some point. And two names on the corner market that will be watched closely when it comes to those deals are the Denver Broncos’ Patrick Surtain II and New York Jets’ Sauce Gardner. Right now, that pair has the talent to move the cornerback salary needle in a very big way. And barring injuries, it’s likely coming next offseason.
More teams than ever are wary of letting their young quarterbacks play exhibition snaps
NFL teams seem to be leaning into limiting (or eliminating) reps of their young quarterbacks — even the rookies — in preseason games. Some teams are citing the necessity of having to risk playing other starters around the young QBs in order to make their reps worthwhile, which then compounds the injury risks. There’s also the addition of joint practices, which more teams are seeing as offering better bang for the buck with their quarterbacks, while also cutting down on the risks of an injury.
The bottom line? We could be heading to an NFL preseason in which rookie QBs may play less than ever. Possibly something modeled after what the Atlanta Falcons did with Michael Penix, playing him in one preseason game and then calling it a day. As one general manager put it, losing a quarterback to an injury that takes them off the practice field simply isn’t worth it in the modern NFL.
“You need the reps,” he said. “You need time on task. You need to f**k s**t up lot in practice — just like we all do — to get it right in games. You just need to see everything more. All those things, with the chemistry that develops and the experiences, the time on task lost because you’re re-habbing an injury — it really sets you back as a rookie.”
Roger Goodell took a stray that is hard to disagree with
One head coach was talking about the justification for a rise in quarterback salaries and couldn’t resist a little shot at commissioner Roger Goodell.
“The commissioner should never make more than the best player in your league,” he said. “Roger Goodell shouldn’t make more than Patrick Mahomes. I can find 20 people that can run the league. There aren’t 20 of Mahomes.”
I don’t know if there are 20 people out there capable of replacing Goodell. But I’m fairly certain there isn’t one person out there capable of replacing Mahomes. And their salary disparity is pretty wild: Mahomes is slated to make a shade under $46 million in 2024 from the Kansas City Chiefs. Goodell’s last reported annual salary was $63.9 million, which he earned in both the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 league years.
After teams saw the offseason ‘Hard Knocks’ with the New York Giants, it’s going to be very tough sell to other franchises
So many teams — and I mean a lot — were shocked by the amount of behind-the-scenes footage that ended up in the offseason version of “Hard Knocks” with the New York Giants. From the combine prepping of general manager Joe Schoen, where he pretty clearly wasn’t truthful in an ensuing media appearance, to John Mara’s lingering affection for Saquon Barkley to several other moments, it stunned quite a few other organizations that the Giants would expose some of the things they did.
Said one general manager, “[‘Hard Knocks’] used to be a show about character development. It was about the characters. But they just did way too much about what we do internally.”
When Andy Reid writes his book, there is a chapter that many coaches and GMs want to read
As the league’s quarterback cycle speeds up and there is more pressure than ever to play rookies immediately, a lot of coaches and general managers would love to know all of the inside detail that went into the Kansas City Chiefs’ sitting Patrick Mahomes for essentially the entirety of his rookie season. It’s hard enough sitting a first-round rookie quarterback in the NFL, let alone a guy who basically became the league’s best player when he stepped into his starting job in Year 2.
“I’d love to know how they kept a Ferrari parked in the garage that long,” one general manager said. “Like, how did they do it? What were the conversations over the course of that year?”
One GM’s response to the offseason death of Minnesota Vikings rookie Khyree Jackson
When Minnesota Vikings rookie Khyree Jackson died as a passenger in a car crash in July, one general manager from another team responded by getting all of his rookies onto a text message thread with each other for the rest of the summer break.
“I just wanted the guys to know that we’re a family and that we can all help each other and be there when it comes to making decisions and looking out for each other,” he said. “Basically, let’s all just take care of each other the best we can.”
