If the Pittsburgh Steelers are going to land Justin Fields, it will likely be on the cheaper side of things. But they will have a hurdle to get to that, as at least three other teams are expected to be in the race for Fields. According to Jeremy Fowler of ESPN, those three teams have done work on landing Fields.
“Chicago has not played its hand, and several league sources believe Fields — who has not requested a trade — could probably garner a Day 2 pick in a potential deal. There’s no firm deadline on a trade, though the start of free agency is sort of a soft one. Chicago will need multiple teams in the fray to drive a market, and after asking around, I expect Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Las Vegas and Minnesota to be on the radar,” Fowler said.
Despite reports suggesting otherwise, Schefter thinks Atlanta is not a front-runner to trade for Fields.
“I think Atlanta will be something of a surprise right now to trade for Justin Fields,” Schefter said, via On3.com’s Nick Kosko. “There’s been some conversations about the Pittsburgh Steelers, maybe something can be figured out there.”
Asked specifically at the Combine about potentially trading for Fields, Steelers general manager Omar Khan said that he would not get into specifics about the conversations he’s had around the league.
“I’m not gonna go into details about the conversations that we’ve had,” he said. “But like I mentioned earlier, I can tell you that I have an obligation to look at every avenue that’s out there to make us a better football team.”
Khan said that he has full faith in Kenny Pickett as the Steelers’ starting quarterback, but stressed the fact that competition will be a part of the process.
“I have full faith in Kenny,” Khan said. “He’s shown us some good things. Obviously, there were some issues with the offense and I’m excited about the impact that Arthur Smith is going to have on him. Arthur is very optimistic about Kenny. I know they’ve communicated. We’ll have some strong competition there and we’ll see how it goes. …
“Regardless of what position, not just the quarterback position, you guys have heard me talk about this last year when I first got this job, competition is important to me. And that’s no different to the quarterback position. Competition makes us all better. That’s regardless of position. That’s just in life.”
On an episode of Pardon My Take, Schefter revealed that he believes it could cost multiple picks to land Fields.
“I think that Justin Fields compensation is somewhere between what Alex Smith got and what Sam Darnold got. A two and a four. A two and a five. A two and a three, something like that,” Schefter said.