If the Pittsburgh Steelers’ crimson zone woes proceed throughout this Sunday’s recreation 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 crimson zone landing proportion for the continuing season and the way former beginning quarterback Justin Fields “has a greater crimson zone QBR (92.2) and completion proportion (57.1%)” than what Russell Wilson posted (8.9 QBR, 34.6% completion proportion) over his first 5 begins.
Throughout Tuesday’s version of the “Final Cleveland Sports activities Present,” NFL reporter Aditi Kinkhabwala of CBS Sports activities advised Pittsburgh head coach Mike Tomlin is not married to retaining Wilson his QB1 if the Steelers’ red-zone struggles persist.
“I feel it’s very throughout 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 sort of coated up the previous few 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 crimson 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 damage, 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 unhealthy 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. However, 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 capable of put increasingly more on his desk each week,” Kinkhabwala added about Fields.
Tomlin’s dealing with of a fragile quarterback state of affairs will end result 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 provide 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.