Cornerback Sauce Gardner remembers preparing for the Pittsburgh Steelers last season. His New York Jets were set to hit the road for a Week 7 game against the perennial AFC North contender.
It was up in the air whether the Steelers would start dual-threat QB Justin Fields or veteran Russell Wilson. Fields had gone 4-2 in six starts to begin the year while Wilson was sidelined with a calf injury.
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“We didn’t know if Justin was going to play or not and who was going to be the starter,” Gardner, a two-time first-team All-Pro, recalled Wednesday on “The Pat McAfee Show.”
“We had to change the whole game plan for Justin, just for him to not even play that game, just for Russ to be the starter. So then we went back to the other game plan like the night before or something like that.”
Gardner added: “I don’t know what disrespect [Justin] received, but in terms of the players and the teams, I feel like they always give him his respect that’s needed.”
As Gardner mentioned, Wilson got the nod that weekend and finished out the season as the Steelers’ QB1, occasionally giving way to Fields for mostly run plays designed to keep defenses on edge.
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Fields, who previously had ups and downs as a three-year starter for the Chicago Bears, signed with Gardner’s Jets in free agency this offseason.
“We got a new dawg in town,” Gardner said on the “McAfee Show.”
“We got Justin Fields. He a dawg.”
Fields has flashed stardom at points of his four-season NFL career. When he was in Chicago, the 6-foot-3 signal-caller recorded the second-most rushing yards in a season by a quarterback in league history. He piled up 1,143 yards on the ground in 2022, trailing only two-time MVP Lamar Jackson, who tallied 1,206 rushing yards in 2019. During that 2022 season, Fields’ second campaign with the Bears, he broke the single-game NFL record for rushing yards by a quarterback with a whopping 178 in a narrow, Week 9 loss to the Miami Dolphins.
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But Fields — a Heisman Trophy finalist at Ohio State — never achieved the kind of passing consistency the Bears were hoping for. Granted Chicago didn’t do a great job of setting Fields up for success, first personnel-wise and then scheme-wise, but Fields’ throwing gave fans a roller coaster ride. He had two starts as a rookie in 2021 where he completed less than 40% of his passes. Fields had another in 2022. And, although he didn’t have any of those in 2023, he still reached or eclipsed a 60% completion rate only seven times that season.
His six starts in Pittsburgh, however, were encouraging enough for a quarterback-needy team like the Jets to take a chance on him this offseason. While he averaged fewer than seven yards per attempt in four of his games as QB1, he took care of the ball. Fields posted a 5:1 touchdown-to-interception ratio and rounded out the year with an improved 65.8% completion percentage.
Fields took a step forward as a passer with the Steelers, and it sounds like he’s taken a few more this offseason with the Jets.
“There’s only a certain amount of quarterbacks that can make [certain throws],” Gardner said, before heaping praise on Fields’ arm, via the “McAfee Show.” “I’m talking about throws on, like, Aaron [Rodgers’] type of level. When it comes to being able to squeeze those throws in there, I always thought Aaron was the best when it came to that. And it’s like Justin had made a few throws where I’m like, ‘OK, he really been in the lab, for real.’ I could just tell.”
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Gardner just spent two seasons with Rodgers. The Jets went much younger with the 26-year-old Fields this offseason, and Gardner sees Fields’ youth as an asset.
“Him being younger as well, like me being able to say certain things and him being able to say certain things about each of our games — I can just tell he’s been locked in, in terms of tape, in terms of the playbook, in terms of everything,” Gardner said.
“He getting to the facility early, being one of the last people to leave. He really been dialed in, trying to make those type of throws. He made a few throws in OTAs that I’m like, ‘Yo, I did not know he was capable of making this throw.'”
The pressure is on for Fields to impress in-game, too. With his third team in five seasons, the clock is ticking on the former first-round pick to put it all together.
From Gardner’s perspective, Fields has displayed that kind of urgency, plus heightened precision.
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