The Pittsburgh Steelers had a rough opening week of the 2024 preseason. They lost to the Houston Texans by a score of 20-12, but a large chunk of the Texans’ points came from massive mistakes by the Black and Gold. Murphy’s Law was seemingly taking place, although preseason is a great time to get that out of the way. Either way, the Steelers are going into their next week of practice with a lot of things to clean up. They can’t let many of these issues pop up again.

One of these issues was working with the snaps, as the exchange between Nate Herbig and Justin Fields was off, resulting in two botched snaps that the Steelers were lucky to pounce on. With Zach Frazier waiting for his chance, Herbig can’t afford to have those types of plays. Stuff like that could result in the rookie center getting his chance to start sooner rather than later.

However, Mike Tomlin took a different approach to it during his postgame press conference. He was asked about how Fields played during his first game action in Pittsburgh. He brought up the botched snaps and said that he had as much to do with those issues as their guard-turned-center did.

“Obviously, he was a component of the C-Q (center-quarterback) exchange, and from my perspective, that’s dual responsibility on the center and the quarterback. It negated a lot of good things going on in those first couple of drives. I think one definitively got stopped by it with the 2nd and 14. You get behind the chains, particularly in the early stages before you gain real cohesion and have enough of a menu to get you out of the circumstances, you’re a dead group, and so the C-Q exchanges were an issue.”

Obviously, the exchanges are a problem, although it should be expected considering that Herbig has played mostly guard throughout his career and Fields is new to the team/system. Both are learning on the fly, but it’s still unacceptable to have those in the game. The Steelers didn’t cut Mason Cole in the offseason just so those issues could show its ugly face once again. They need to be cleaned up as soon as possible.

Steelers May Have More Reason To Bench Fields

While Herbig could lose his spot, Fields may have just locked himself into the backup role. Tomlin was specifically asked about Fields, and he spent most of that time talking about the botched snaps and how he deserves some blame as well. He had been given all kinds of opportunities to run with the first-team offense, but after that game, he may be relegated to second-team quarterback for the rest of preseason.

Tomlin had been talking all season long about how Russell Wilson had “pole position” for the starting quarterback role. Even though he had barely practiced before this preseason game, the team still had him listed as the top quarterback on the first release of the 2024 depth chart. Their plan was to have Wilson start the whole season and treat Fields like a prospect, and after that game, Tomlin may have found his reason to keep Fields from seeing many more first-team reps.

Fields did come out and blame himself for the mishandled snaps during his press conference as well. He talked about how he needs to be on the same page as the center, no matter who it is. It’s great to see the young quarterback taking accountability, but neither he, nor Wilson, nor Herbig, can allow this to happen again if they want to keep their jobs.

QB Justin Fields on his Steelers in-game debut pic.twitter.com/imHnSeTZvq

— Chris Adamski (@C_AdamskiTrib) August 10, 2024