Jayden Daniels. Jalen Hurts. Josh Allen. Patrick Mahomes.

The NFL’s Final Four provides a Who’s Who of some of the best quarterbacks in the NFL right now. There are some big names missing, of course, most notably Lamar Jackson, whose Ravens suffered another early playoff exit by losing in Buffalo on Sunday. That’s how it goes in January, though. When the music stops, someone prominent is left without a chair.

There’s something else notable about the quarterbacks who will participate in the NFL’s penultimate weekend. They are contemporary players. What does that mean? It means they play a style of football that is in line with the trends that dominate offense these days. Daniels, Hurts, Allen and Mahomes are all mobile. They operate from both inside and outside the pocket. They can attack defenses both vertically and horizontally. They are adept at running read-options and RPOs to slow defenses down and keep them from playing fast. They are dynamic, capable of improvising when things break down. They are, in a word, diverse, and their offenses thrive because of it.

Contrast this to the offense run by the Pittsburgh Steelers, particularly the version we saw over the final five weeks of the season with Russell Wilson at quarterback. Few of the characteristics listed above apply. The Steelers played at a ponderous pace, hoping to pound the football and control the clock. Their passing game was limited to perimeter throws and deep balls. Pocket movement disappeared. There were no read-options or RPOs, no designed quarterback runs. Wilson, once a master of improvisation, was no longer athletic or instinctive enough to make magic out of nothing. When things broke down, he often wound up on his back. The offense was neither dynamic nor diverse. It was plodding, predictable, and ultimately, painful to watch.

With a crucial off-season decision looming at quarterback, the Steelers should take note of these things. Re-signing Wilson seems regressive. Casting about for a free agent with whom they can make a Super Bowl run is almost impossible. So, too, is drafting one, given where the Steelers are slotted to select. You never want to map your off-season by making the best of a mediocre situation. Given their options, though, signing Fields is the smart move.

Entering 2025 with Fields as the starter guarantees nothing. We’re talking about a guy with a career record as a starting quarterback of 14-30. Yes, he went 4-2 as a starter and showed progress this past season. But he is far from a finished product. Putting him in the same class as Daniels, Hurts, Allen and Mahomes is comical.

Still, for Pittsburgh to evolve on offense, they need to embrace a more contemporary approach. Take Philadelphia. Like Pittsburgh, the Eagles pride themselves on running the football. They did it better than just about anyone, finishing second in rushing yards per game and fourth in yards per attempt. But Philadelphia did so largely out of 11-personnel formations with one tight end and three receivers. This allowed them to spread the field and open up the box for Saquon Barkley. With both Barkley and Hurts as run threats, and explosive receivers like A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith outside, defenses were stretched from sideline-to-sideline.

The Steelers don’t have such threats at wide receiver. But they have enough cap space this off-season to make a run at a player like Tee Higgins or Amari Cooper. They could also trade George Pickens for assets to upgrade the receiving corps, or try to acquire an impact receiver in the draft. Point being, with an emphasis on improving on the perimeter, Pittsburgh wouldn’t have to live in the big personnel sets that cluttered the box and bogged down their offense this past year. And they could integrate their quarterback into the run game, which the NFL’s Final Four all do well.

Here’s how those teams did this season in terms of rushing yards per game by their quarterback, with Pittsburgh’s numbers with both Fields and Wilson as the starter included:

Washington – 57.8

Pittsburgh (6 starts with Fields) – 38.5

Philadelphia – 37.9

Buffalo – 31.3

Kansas City – 18.4

Pittsburgh (12 starts with Wilson) – 13.4

With the exception of Mahomes, Wilson is the outlier. But Mahomes extends plays and improvises in ways that make running him by design unnecessary, something Wilson can longer do. You don’t have to run your quarterback to have an effective offense — the Detroit Lions led the NFL in points per game with the largely immobile Jared Goff behind center — but it sure helps. Of the top ten scoring teams in the league this year, seven had a starting quarterback who rushed for 25 yards per game or better.

Fields is also more adept at executing some of the RPOs that have become staples in the league’s better offenses. He isn’t great at sitting in the pocket and reading coverage. But if you target a single defender as his read key, and have him operate off of the movement of that player, Fields can be effective. Mahomes, Hurts, Jackson and C.J. Stroud ranked as the best quarterbacks in the league this past season on RPO throws. Fields has the same physical attributes of those players, and if trained properly, should be effective on those schemes as well.

The real question, then, is this: do the Steelers want to modernize their offense? And by “the Steelers,” we mean Mike Tomlin and Arthur Smith. Tomlin stated that his goal for the offense this season was to minimize risk, which meant he preferred a conservative approach. He found a perfect coordinator for that in Smith, who favors run-heavy schemes and big personnel groups. Ultimately, this philosophy didn’t work out, especially against the league’s better teams. Down the stretch, when Pittsburgh played four playoff teams in their final five contests, the offense averaged just 14.2 points per game. Opening things up will start with a willingness to do so from the team’s head coach and coordinator.

Running the football, minimizing turnovers and controlling the clock is still an effective way to win football games. There are more ways to do it, though, than by using an antiquated approach. The Steelers should take a cue from the NFL’s Final Four and lock in an athletic quarterback who plays a contemporary style of football. There’s no guarantee Fields will get them to a Super Bowl, or even break their playoff win drought. But he does give them the skill set to modernize their attack, which is a good place to start.