If the Pittsburgh Steelers’ purple zone woes proceed throughout this Sunday’s sport on the 4-7 Cincinnati Bengals, might it immediate them to make a quarterback change?
For a bit revealed Tuesday morning, Steelers insider Brooke Pryor of ESPN talked about how the 8-3 membership is ranked 30th in purple zone landing share for the continued season and the way former beginning quarterback Justin Fields “has a greater purple zone QBR (92.2) and completion share (57.1%)” than what Russell Wilson posted (8.9 QBR, 34.6% completion share) over his first 5 begins.
Throughout Tuesday’s version of the “Final Cleveland Sports activities Present,” NFL reporter Aditi Kinkhabwala of CBS Sports activities urged Pittsburgh head coach Mike Tomlin is not married to conserving Wilson his QB1 if the Steelers’ red-zone struggles persist.
“I believe it’s very inside the realm of risk that Justin Fields goes again to being the Steelers starter,” Kinkhabwala defined, Alex Kozora of Steelers Depot shared. “This Steelers offense has a variety of warts which were type of coated up the previous couple of weeks due to Chris Boswell, their kicker, who’s as money as they arrive, and due to this protection. However they’ve been completely horrific within the purple zone. Russell Wilson once again is taking horrible, horrible, horrible sacks.”
Fields went 4-2 as Pittsburgh’s starter whereas Wilson recovered from a lingering calf harm, however the one-time Tremendous Bowl champion then won his first 4 begins earlier than the Steelers suffered an upset 24-19 loss on the Cleveland Browns (3-8) final Thursday night time. Wilson alarmingly took 15 sacks over the previous 4 video games, 4 of which occurred in opposition to Cleveland.
“In case your quarterback continues to take actually, actually dangerous sacks,” Kinkhabwala mentioned, “you have to assess once more.”
Fields reportedly was by no means given “full command of the offense” throughout his time as Pittsburgh’s starter. Nonetheless, Kinkhabwala revealed that Steelers coaches believed the 25-year-old “was getting higher each single week” earlier than Tomlin went to Wilson.
“They had been in a position to put increasingly more on his desk each week,” Kinkhabwala added about Fields.
Tomlin’s dealing with of a fragile quarterback state of affairs will consequence within the Steelers coming into December atop the AFC North standings. That mentioned, it seems like he might make one other change subsequent week if Wilson fails to supply a number of landing drives at Cincinnati’s Paycor Stadium.
As of Tuesday afternoon, DraftKings Sportsbook listed the Steelers as three-point underdogs in opposition to the Bengals.
