I can tell that the NFL season has officially started when I spend portions of a nice Sunday afternoon steaming mad at men wearing black and white striped shirts. That’s nothing new, even though the refs went above and beyond to make sure I knew week one had arrived. I think my blood pressure has finally returned to normal, so that’s enough about their bad calls.

My big worry about Justin Fields in the Arthur Smith offense was his lack of under center snaps during his career, and how that might impact both his performance and the offense in general if he were called into action. We didn’t have to wait long due to Russell Wilson’s lingering calf issue.

As a recap, last year with the Bears, Fields only had 27 under center pass attempts for the entire year, with just 24 of those times being play action. I’m no football statistician, but that seems like some extremely low numbers.

Before I break down what happened in the Falcons game, my numbers are going to look a little different from the official stat lines. I’m counting plays that were intended to be throws but ended up as broken play scrambles as a pass play, because that was the way it was drawn up for Fields to execute. I’m also including the 36 yard completion that was ruled as OPI, because Fields still delivered a catchable downfield pass on that play. I’m not letting a bad judgement call dock him on that, because I’m looking at how Fields performed instead of official stats.

Now that the accounting is out of the way, let’s compare how the Steelers used Fields. Much like in preseason, there were two fumbled QB-Center exchanges, which was not good. That problem seemed to go away after those first few series, so hopefully that will be a non-issue going forward. Justin ran 9 under center play action pass attempts in the game, with 4 completions, 3 incompletions, and 2 broken play scrambles. If that average keeps up, Fields will match last year’s totals with Chicago early in his third game with the Steelers.

By contrast, Fields had 19 called pass plays in Shotgun, with 12 completions, 2 incompletions, 2 sacks, and 3 broken play scrambles. Most of the time, Arthur Smith had Fields in shotgun when down and distance dictated it, meaning either it was 3rd down or the team was behind schedule on early downs. The bulk of the passing yards came from shotgun as well. The play action passes ended up being checkdowns to avoid pressure more often than not, and when it wasn’t a checkdown, it was still a short yardage throw to the outside hash.

All in all, it was a decent performance, considering the standard of the back-up QB famously set at “don’t kill us” by Coach Tomlin. If those center exchange fumbles had been lost, however, it would be a different story. Getting a road win on opening day when the refs are impacting the game covers up much of the criticism. Due to all the film I have watched, I wasn’t expecting Fields to come out and be amazing. I did want to see growth, and he delivered on that metric. He improved as the game went on, and he was visibly more comfortable in the late stages. All the reports during camp that Justin was working hard to learn this system is evident.

Does it mean he should be the starter once Wilson is healthy? Fields is still inconsistent and inaccurate at times, especially with the shorter throws. In my film watch, Russell Wilson was extremely accurate last year with Denver and delivered balls that were easily caught in stride allowing the receiver to make the most of YAC situations. Would that be more beneficial to this offense than Fields ability to run? Those are hard questions to answer, and only seeing Wilson in action will give us the answer.

If Fields had been able to put the ball in the end zone Sunday, it would have made the starting QB decision much harder on this coaching staff. As great a performance as Boswell had, living on three pointers will only go so far in this league. If Wilson is 100 percent, the team needs to see what that looks like, and if it will produce more consistent scoring drives. Just imagine what this defense could do with a touchdown or two on the scoreboard…even if the refs rob TJ Watt half of the time.