What Are the Steelers Waiting for at Quarterback?
It’s been five weeks since the end of the 2024 season for the Pittsburgh Steelers, and there has been basically no external sign as to what the team intends to do at quarterback for 2025 to this point.
Steelers president Art Rooney II said in his post-season press session that his preference would be to sign one of Justin Fields or Russell Wilson to a multi-year contract, which seemed to set the table for such a deal to take place in the coming weeks. That was four weeks ago. There has been no movement.
Of course, Rooney said positive things about Kenny Pickett in his year-end press conference in 2024. General manager Omar Khan said he had “full faith” in Pickett during his briefing with the media at the 2024 NFL Combine last February. Pickett was traded away two weeks later.
So clearly, you can’t always go by what they say. Steelers Now sources indicate that the Steelers top brass has not reached a conclusion, with supporters of both Fields and Wilson remaining in the building. Others strongly dislike both options, and could possibly have been the sources of stories linking the Steelers to options such as Aaron Rodgers, Matthew Stafford and even the unlikely and since-denied pursuit of Trevor Lawrence.
So, part of the reason that the Steelers haven’t made any news at the quarterback position is that they haven’t made up their minds.
But we might not know it right when they do, either. The players involved have a good bit to say about who will be the Steelers’ quarterback in 2025.
Wilson seems eager to return to Pittsburgh, and likely with good reason. It’s hard to envision another team handing him the reigns after the five-game meltdown to end the 2024 season. Honestly, it’s hard to imagine the Steelers doing it, too, but here we are. If the Steelers wanted Wilson to put his autograph on a dotted line tomorrow, he probably would. The fact that he hasn’t should tell you a lot.
Fields, on the other hand, is not such an open and shut case. Fields has been widely praised for the way he handled being benched during the 2024 season, but that process likely didn’t make a return to the Steelers the No. 1 priority for him this offseason, despite him saying that he would like to. The can’t trust the words things goes for players as well as teams.
In a very weak free agent class at quarterback, the way the Steelers protected Fields in 2024 may end up playing to his benefit. He posted the best numbers of his career by far, led the team to a 4-2 start, and doesn’t have the late-season stink on him that players like Wilson and Sam Darnold have.
Wilson is likely looking for one last paycheck at this point in his career, but Fields is probably on the hunt for a semi-significant payday.
In the NFL quarterback spectrum, there is a very wide salary gulf between the top backups (Darnold at $10 million and Gardner Minshew at $12.5 million per year) and the bottom-tier starters (Geno Smith at $25 million annually and Baker Mayfield at $33.3m per year).
The contract for Fields this offseason will almost certainly fall within that range. But that is an awfully large range for Fields’ agent David Mulugheta to attempt to negotiate through.
It seems like he’s already starting that work.
Earlier this week, ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler reported that the New York Jets “could have some interest” in Fields replacing Rodgers as New York’s starting quarterback.
Last week, Fowler reported that Fields is open to a return to Pittsburgh, but wants a more legitimate chance to start.
“He wants a clear path to be the guy for a full season, which he was not last year,” Fowler said.
Fair enough. Mulugheta is one of the game’s more prominent agents. He didn’t get to that point by being bad at his job.
I think a lot of Steelers fans have this idea that signing Fields should be easy for the Steelers or that he will take some kind of team-friendly deal to come back to Pittsburgh.
I don’t get that sense. The Steelers are going to have to pay market value for Fields if they want him to come back, and that wide range above invites quite an interpretation of what the market value actually might be.
If the Steelers want to sign Fields before the March 10 contact period opens, they’ll have to be doing so an estimate of Fields’ value, and to get him to agree to such a deal, it’ll probably have to be on the high side.
Fields seems like the preferred choice of the fanbase at this point, and that makes senses. He’s young and well-liked inside and outside the locker room. His professionalism during the 2024 season was noteworthy. It seems like a better choice than running it back with the same plan that failed in 2024, only with the star character now 37, instead of 36.
But if signing Fields isn’t easy or cheap, it makes the value proposition of such a deal a lot worse. Many cringed when the name Daniel Jones was posited as an option for the Steelers on Monday. Jones isn’t that much worse than Fields, and you could probably make an argument that he’s the better passer. He’s similarly a younger option than Wilson.
None of the Steelers’ options are good ones, but they do need options. Omar Khan appears to be tossing over every rock in the NFL to find a real upgrade to the quarterback position, as unlikely as that quest may turn out.
Fields is a fine Plan B, but it doesn’t seem that either he or the team is in a rush to link up. With Fields not a sure thing, Wilson appears to be along for the ride as leverage and as Plan C.
There is no real impetus for the Steelers to make move. They likely know the amount that it would take to get Fields to sign today and are not enamored with it. There is little risk in waiting him out, at least until it gets close to the contact period. They are clearly not that into bringing Wilson back, or they’d have done it by now.
So what happens now? Khan is going to keep tire-kicking until he finds something that he likes, or he gives up and Fields starts to look like the better option. Or maybe Fields will play hardball, and Russ will cook once again.
All three options remain on the table. None appear likely to be very good. That is the state of the Steelers quarterback situation.