The Pittsburgh Steelers saw Justin Fields take the field for the first time on Friday night, and while the surface numbers looked good, Fields was sacked twice and part of two faulty quarterback-center exchanges that resulted in drive-killing fumbles.
Given the high-profile nature of Fields’ departure from the Chicago Bears, many eyes around the NFL were on Fields as he started. However, two former NFL quarterbacks, Chase Daniel, and Dan Orlovksy, did not seem too impressed by what Fields put out on tape.
Daniel even called Fields’ performance ‘not good’ and credited him with at least one of the sacks.
“I thought he played okay,” Daniel said. “Not going to lie, I thought there is a lot of improvement to be made. Two fumbled snaps. He took two sacks on third down that we are so often seeing him used to do. I don’t think he took a step forward in the quarterback competition against Russell Wilson.”
Orlovsky believes both snaps are on Fields. Both runs were zone runs, and Fields should have taken a step with center Nate Herbig. As a result, he failed to get a clean snap and killed both plays before they even started.
However, Orlovksy also stated that Fields left a big play on the field later in the game. On a third and long, Fields hit Pat Freiermuth on a checkdown. Yet, Orlovsky says Fields let the play develop nearly long enough, citing Fields’ drop and how it was mistimed from the route concept. The Steelers would punt.
“Some stuff to improve on,” Orlovksy said. “We need to work on our center-quarterback exchanges and the pace of our drops.”
There was plenty of good to come from Fields’ first performance, too, but Fields and Mike Tomlin seem to agree with both former quarterbacks that the negativity overshadowed much of the good that Fields showed. He will look to bounce back from that against the Bills next Saturday.
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