Officially, Russell Wilson won’t return. Agreeing to a one-year deal with the New York Giants yesterday, he’s starting fresh. So are the Pittsburgh Steelers. Despite Art Rooney II and Omar Khan’s repeated commentary of wanting to retain Justin Fields or Wilson, they clearly had no interest in the latter. Yesterday’s signing sealed that but the writing was on the wall from the moment the team failed to pivot to Wilson after losing out on Fields.
Wilson wanted to return. I take him at his word. Pittsburgh had other ideas.
So what happened? How did Wilson and Mike Tomlin seem like the perfect match one year ago to letting him sign with the Giants? Why is Pittsburgh so willing to wait and gamble on Aaron Rodgers, a 41-year-old quarterback who may have just one NFL year left?
At some point, that story will likely be reported out. Once everyone has their quarterback, people will talk. Reporters will report. It doesn’t take a NASA engineer to figure out the two primary reasons.
1. The Steelers’ five-game losing streak.
2. A rift between Wilson and the Steelers’ coaching staff.
Losing is obvious enough. Pittsburgh suffered a historic collapse to end 2024. The team’s first five-game losing streak since 1998, the Steelers went from Super Bowl contenders to limping into the playoffs. To end it, they were dispatched by their Baltimore Ravens rivals on the road in uncompetitive fashion, out-classed from first to final drive.
Wilson doesn’t absorb all of that. Ranking the biggest problems over that streak, he might not even make the podium. A young, tired offensive line coupled with a defensive line that wilted were the central issues. A tough schedule didn’t help. Short weeks, top-tier opponents.
But Wilson certainly absorbs blame. He took more sacks. He had more turnovers. The offense stopped moving and producing, held at or under 17 points in five-straight games for the first time since 1969. Chuck Noll’s first year on the job.
No matter how fault gets sliced, a losing streak is a losing streak. For a Steelers’ team expressing and needing change, running it back with the guy who started the final five losses is a tough sell. It’d be hard to get excited about re-signing Russ.
Still, it wouldn’t be impossible. Wilson’s return could be spun as the chance to build something. To get off the quarterback roulette, a different name each year. And at his best, Wilson brought Pittsburgh’s offense to greater heights than anyone since Ben Roethlisberger’s retirement.
The main reason Wilson isn’t back has to be beyond that. It can’t just be on-field related. The reported riff with the coaching staff, primarily OC Arthur Smith, takes center stage. A toxic environment so tense that Mike Tomlin looked at it and went, “we can’t go down that road for a full season.”
We still don’t know all the details for why Wilson butted heads. But something went down. Perhaps it wasn’t all in-season either. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s column citing coaches handcuffing Wilson from running the offense couldn’t have sat well with Smith and the coaching staff. We don’t know Gerry Dulac’s sources and I’m always careful to speculate but odds are the bulk of that reporting is coming from Wilson (or more likely, Wilson’s camp) than it is Pittsburgh’s coaching staff.
The story attempted to shift blame from quarterback to playcaller. Much of the criticism was fair, Arthur Smith and the offensive game plan had its problems, but it’s a story that surely angered him.
A coordinator and quarterback has to have a good relationship. Or at the least, they can’t be at odds with each other. Ben Roethlisberger and Todd Haley were good at their job but the toxicity made their situation untenable. It’s a story shown time and time again around the league.
Was there a rift between Tomlin and Wilson? Maybe. Fox Sports’ Jordan Schultz recently hinted as much. We have even less detail on that but maybe that story that pointed the finger didn’t make Tomlin a happy camper, either.
Still, Pittsburgh publicly stated they wanted Wilson back even after that article came out. Why? One-half leverage, one-half public relations. Leverage to avoid the team putting all their chips on Fields, theoretically hurting their ability to sign him even if in the end, they lost him anyway. And a headline of “Steelers say they want Fields, not Wilson” creates a whole news cycle the Steelers would like to avoid. By the time Tomlin, Rooney, and Khan speak again, Pittsburgh will hopefully have a new quarterback to excitedly talk about and sell instead, softening the questions about moving on from Wilson.
In the end, Mike Tomlin’s closest media confidant Jay Glazer was proven correct. On February 5th, Glazer was adamant Wilson wouldn’t reunite with Pete Carroll in Las Vegas, confident he wouldn’t return to Pittsburgh, and was even skeptical Fields would re-sign. The Raiders traded for Carroll’s other former quarterback Geno Smith. Wilson starts fresh in New York. And Fields went to the Jets.
For the fifth-straight season, the Steelers will start a new Week 1 quarterback. When Pittsburgh put together their 2024 plan, low-risk signings and trades for Wilson and Fields, their goal was to avoid this position. But the NFL is unpredictable and clearly, the team thought starting over again – likely with a 41-year-old Aaron Rodgers – was better than trying to make it work with Russell Wilson.
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