The Steelers Said They Wanted Justin Fields or Russell Wilson. They Got Neither. Does It Matter?
PALM BEACH, Fla. — The first two times a member of the Pittsburgh Steelers top leadership spoke to the media this offseason, the focus at the quarterback position was re-signing one of incumbents Justin Fields and Russell Wilson.
Steelers president Art Rooney said in January that he wanted to have one of Fields or Wilson under contract for 2025.
“I think they’re both capable quarterbacks and my preference would be to sign one of them,” Rooney said. “So that’ll be the priority, and I think that will give us the best opportunity to move forward.”
In February, general Omar Khan said that not only did the Steelers want to sign one of Fields and Wilson, he gave a timeframe for such a deal to be made: before the start of free agency on March 10.
“We’ve had conversations with both Russ’ people and Justin’s representatives,” Khan said at the 2025 NFL Combine. “Ideally, you’d like to sign one of the guys we had last year, but the reality is they’re both free agents. … In an ideal scenario, you’d like to have this done before the start of the league year. That impacts who you sign. That impacts the type of receiver you may go after or how you build the rest of the team, so all of that has an effect.”
On Sunday, head coach Mike Tomlin made the third appearance of a member of the Steelers’ top decision-making troika at the NFL owner’s meetings.
The Steelers did not sign Fields. They tried to before the start of free agency, but he was determined to test the market. They tried to after the starter of free agency, but he ended up taking a more-lucrative contract with the New York Jets.
They did not even appear to try to sign Wilson. After making Fields their obvious initial priority, the Steelers pivoted to Aaron Rodgers. Even after weeks of waiting on an answer from Rodgers, the Steelers made no serious attempt to stop Wilson from signing with the New York Giants.
“I know what we said about Russell and Justin,” Tomlin said. “But it didn’t pan out that way. Such is life in our game, and particularly, in free agency. … We’ll continue to explore all of our options in rounding that room out.”
Tomlin was asked about what the team has in mind for a Plan B if Rodgers eventually decides not to sign in Pittsburgh. But Rodgers is already the Plan B. Fields was the first choice. Wilson, it appears, was along for the ride as leverage all along.
Free agency is essentially over, and the Steelers are stuck waiting on Rodgers. The draft is in a few weeks. OTAs start a few weeks after that. Tomlin said on Sunday that he doesn’t believe that the Steelers are being harmed in any way by waiting for Rodgers to make up his mind.
But that doesn’t exactly jive with what Khan said earlier. The Steelers won’t be able to target their free agent acquisitions to get the most out of Rodgers. If he waits a few more weeks, the same will be true of their draft choices.
Is that a big deal? It might be or it might not be. But Khan though it was important enough to say it at the combine.
The Steelers are well within their rights to wait for Rudolph, and it’s hard to come up with a coherent course of action that’s obviously better than the one their on.
No matter what, the Steelers will be settling for someone who was not their first choice at quarterback.
Though the Steelers are not saying it, the fact that they seem perfectly OK with that state of affairs, by not upping their price for Fields or taking steps to secure Wilson, or giving a deadline to Rodgers, they also don’t seem particularly invested in any of these options.
Which leads to one obvious conclusion. No matter what the Steelers did at quarterback this offseason, it was going to be nothing more than a stop-gap until the 2026 NFL Draft.