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With Justin Fields in at quarterback, Arthur Smith and the Pittsburgh Steelers sought the kill shot on 3rd and 4. It didn’t work, but they don’t regret the process that brought them there. HC Mike Tomlin has already tried to defend the play.
Speaking to the media on Thursday, Smith offered his own explanation as to what led to the Steelers attempting a deep pass with their backup quarterback on 3rd and 4 as they nursed a one-point lead in the snow.
He explained that the Steelers were moving the ball, including in the snaps with Fields at quarterback. After his handoff to Jaylen Warren for a touchdown, the Browns began to change how they were defending the Fields package, however.
“Then they started coming up there and that was a little bit of the decision as we were going through”, Smith explained, about how the Steelers would use Justin Fields. “We hit some big plays on third down. You’re in that moment, and they’re all up there—the whole team was up there. We knew we could get George [Pickens] one on one. We had a mechanism, and that’s why we did it”.
The Steelers named Russell Wilson their starter, but Justin Fields started the first six games due to injury. Arthur Smith by all accounts seems to love working with Fields, and was the first to basically come out and say that they would, in fact, use him in a special package.
Up to that point, the Steelers had only faced speculation about a Fields package, which Smith and the rest of the coaches largely talked around. Once it became reality, though, they embraced it. We don’t know if Arthur Smith or Mike Tomlin called for the pass there. But I think we can reasonably assume that both were on board.
“Obviously, you’ve got to live with the consequences. We didn’t make the play, and that’s your responsibility as a play-caller”, Smith said about Fields’ deep pass to Pickens falling incomplete. The Steelers had to punt, shanked it, and allowed the Browns to score. But of course Fields isn’t the reason they shanked the punt.
“At the time, the intent was we had them locked into a coverage and we had a one-on-one coverage and tried to go win the game. Sometimes maybe you’ve got to be a little bit crazy chasing something. But there’s risk in every one of those”.
The Steelers had the ideal look they would want to allow Justin Fields to throw deep. It didn’t help that Fields hadn’t thrown a pass in a long time, or that it was in the middle of a snowstorm. But they tried, and we would be having a very different conversation if it worked. Because it didn’t work, everybody is calling them stupid. If it worked, they would be called aggressive.
