Mike Garafolo Thinks Steelers Will Regret Their QB Plan

It appears that this will be Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Russell Wilson’s last chance to salvage a one promising NFL career. Wilson’s legacy and reputation certainly took a big hit in Denver, and things didn’t end well in Seattle, either. He had run-ins with the front office in both places.

With Wilson’s controversial personality, Mike Garafolo of NFL Network is befuddled by the Steelers plan at quarterback. He thinks they’re just throwing something together and hoping that it works. He doesn’t see a course of action with their plan

“I like Justin Fields, to a certain extent, and I’d be okay with him in certain scenarios where you’ve got an established starter and somebody he can learn from, but like, what’s he gonna learn from Russ?” Garafolo said on former Seattle radio personality Jason Puckett’s podcast. “You’ve got two incomplete guys that you’re trying to shoehorn in here. I don’t get the plan. I don’t think it works incredibly well with what Arthur Smith wants to do offensively. I don’t know what the hell the plan is, and this is one of those, well, it’s the Steelers and they’re gonna find a way to go 9-8. I’m not so sure this time around. This might be my stop, folks.”

There was a report by The Athletic that members of Denver’s coaching staff believed that Wilson having his own office in the team facility, on the second floor where the Broncos’ coaches and executives have their offices, was bad for the the camaraderie of the team.

“The players were always on the first floor; they never really came up to the second floor,” the coach said. “If you came up to the second floor as a player, it honestly wasn’t a good thing because you were probably getting released.”

Garafolo doesn’t envision Wilson going out of his way to mentor Fields.

“He’s not the kind of guy that I want to be the mentor, either. Sean Payton was livid last year with the way Russ was running the offense, or lack of running the offense,” Garafolo said. “He made it this far in his career. He knows how to play the quarterback position, but he doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy that I’m like, ‘Boy, show him all the ways of doing things in the NFL.’ That’s not Russ to me. I don’t get it. I don’t get the whole thing.”

To Wilson’s credit, shortly after the Fields’ trade was announced, Wilson welcomed him to Pittsburgh on social media.

“Let’s get it @justnfields! QB room bout to be 🔥 🔥 🔥,” Wilson wrote on X.

It will be interesting to see if Wilson is a problem at all in the locker room. Some of it appears to be overblown.

Multiple sources told Alan Saunders of Steelers Now that by the end of Wilson’s tenure in Denver, the relationship with Broncos head coach Sean Payton had become toxic.

But was all of that the fault of Wilson, or was he just a part of a few bad situations. In conversations with several sources close to the Broncos and former teammates of Wilson’s, no one was willing to offer a cogent criticism of the behavior of the 35-year-old quarterback.

“All of that is overblown,” one Broncos source told Steelers Now. “He’s a great guy and great in the locker room.”