The Pittsburgh Steelers are looking for new ways to spark their offense and a longtime team legend believes that Justin Fields may be part of the answer.
Pittsburgh has seen two very different offenses throughout the 2024 season. The year started with a rush-first attack led by Justin Fields before Russell Wilson returned to action, leading to more big passing players and a bit more balance. But in recent weeks, the Steelers haven’t been able to notch 20 points in back-to-back games, and their problems were heightened after a 24-19 loss to the Cleveland Browns on “Thursday Night Football.”
Steelers legend Ben Roethlisberger proposed an idea to help the team’s offensive struggles — start utilizing Justin Fields in new ways, including at wide receiver.
“The nice thing is that when you use Justin (Fields) at quarterback is now it forces you as a defense or an opposing team to focus and spend a little bit of time at practice on it,” Roethlisberger said on his “Footbahlin” podcast. “I would like to see them line him up at receiver a couple of times. Put him at different spots because what that does, even if you don’t do anything with it — again, any time you can force an opponent to spend five minutes on something they might never see, it takes them away from preparing for what they will see.”
Roethlisberger may have a point, especially regarding this Steelers offense that saw one of their main offensive drives occur when Fields managed to break off a 30-yard run against the Browns.
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“So, let’s start putting both of them on the field a little bit,” Roethlisberger continued. “Just every once in a while. And you can still do the same thing. You could put (Fields) out at receiver and hand the ball to (Najee Harris) like you were going to run a normal play. But having him at receiver now makes you think like ‘okay, are they going to throw it to him, are they going to reverse pass to him, are they going to.'”
The Steelers will look to get the offense going in a tough matchup against their AFC North rival Cincinnati Bengals, Kickoff is set for 1 p.m. EST on Sunday.
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