This was why.
Why you added him to the roster two years after spending a No. 1 pick on the position. Why you were overly patient and extra cautious with what was supposed to be a minor injury even as the clock was ticking on the start of the regular season. Why you never gave up on the notion of him, even as his young, talented backup was winning games while he watched. Why it was the right thing to do to put him in the lineup and give him a chance even as so many questioned, criticized, or even mocked the decision. Why the risk was worth it.
It has been three weeks since Coach Mike Tomlin inserted Russell Wilson into the lineup to do the job he was brought to Pittsburgh to do all along, but it wasn't until Sunday against Washington that the timing and the rationale behind the decision came into sharp focus.
Coming off their bye week, the Steelers were 2-0 with Wilson and 6-2 overall going into a showdown vs. the best opponent to this point on its schedule, a schedule that by the way only will get more difficult moving forward. In winning those first two with Wilson at quarterback, the Steelers handled teams with losing records in front of a home crowd. They used some flashy special teams, a battering ram of a running game, and some dynamic plays from their defense, and Wilson played pretty well, too.
The Commanders posed a much greater degree of difficulty for the very simple reason that they were more talented and better coached and had the confidence that comes from winning 7 of their previous 8 games.
And as Sunday's exercise unfolded, the Commanders made some plays, took advantage when the Steelers presented some opportunities, and generally stood toe-to-toe and traded punches. The wind was tricky and required some adjustment. In other words, the Steelers found themselves in a test of wills that was going to last the entire four quarters.
Whether the decision to fake a punt on fourth-and-15 from their own 16-yard line with a 7-0 lead in the first quarter was rashly aggressive or a perfectly timed gamble that became a disaster only after a pass was dropped that was accurate enough and long enough to get the first down is arguable. The defense can be judged on the 5 three-and-outs it inflicted or on the touchdown drive that started at the Washington 4-yard line and included 3 third-down conversions and a facemask penalty that wiped out a sack. And while the offense had gotten the ball into the end zone twice, it still had to punt 5 times in the first half and its only "chunk plays" were a 12-yard run and a 16-yard circus catch.
Assigning blame is an inevitable part of professional sports and everything that happened on Sunday will be blogged and podcasted and graded and rated to death, but none of that really mattered on the floor of Northwest Stadium. The opportunity that each game presents to a team during an NFL regular season is precious, and the ability to manipulate the outcome in your favor is what pays the bills in this business.
And the people experienced in the ways of the NFL realize that the outcome of as few as a half-dozen plays can be the difference between seizing or squandering each of those 17 opportunities.
What's also true is the player on each team most capable of impacting those half-dozen plays, good or bad, is the quarterback. He doesn't have to be good all of the time, but it sure helps if he can be special a few times. Russell Wilson was special in some of those moments against the Commanders, and because of that the Steelers left town with a 28-27 victory that raised their record to 7-2.
Wilson was special on a day when things were not necessarily going according to plan for him. He would finish the game having completed 50 percent of his passes for less than 200 yards, being sacked three times and intercepted once.
The receiver had first put on the uniform four days earlier in coming over in a trade from the Jets, and he was in the game against Washington only as an injury-replacement. He had never repped the play in practice and didn't know what to do on it. But it was third-and-9 from the Washington 32-yard line, there was 2:27 left, and they were losing by 6. It had to be now. Mike Williams said Wilson told him where to line up and what route to run, and then it became a matter of getting his head around for the perfectly timed/thrown ball and catching it. Touchdown. Big-time professional quarterbacking right there.
When the defense turned the ball over on downs near midfield with its own big-time play, the difference between winning or losing came down to protecting a 1-point lead. The Commanders dug in, and then the next thing you know it's fourth-and-1 with 1:02 left to play. Get the first down, and the game is over. Anything else would bring Jayden Daniels and the Washington offense back for another crack at a last-second field goal and a dramatic victory for the home team.
Wilson converted for the Steelers by using cadence as a weapon to create a neutral zone infraction. Five yards. First down. Victory formation.
"It's a good team win," said Tomlin. "When you're coming into an environment like this, and you find a way to get it done, not only is it a well-earned victory, but there's some real growth associated with it. Knowledge of self, individually and collectively, is a component of this thing as we push through this journey. We learned a little bit about ourselves, hopefully in a positive way today."
One of the things they learned was that against a good team on the road, they had a quarterback capable of delivering in the big-time clutch situations that all winning teams in the NFL must have, what the Steelers haven't had since Ben Roethlisberger was plying his trade, what they absolutely have to have for the rest of 2024.
They're going to absolutely have to have it because all that being 7-2 in mid-November earns is the attention of every remaining team on the schedule, and as we've already established that schedule only gets tougher from here. One way or the other, they knew that facing down the barrel of that schedule was going to be necessary, and then how they fared along the way would be what defines them.
Next up is a visit from the Baltimore Ravens, and if history holds that one could make this one seem like a pillow fight. Games like this against Washington and then one against the Ravens a week later – and the situations within games like these that will end up determining the outcome – are why Russell Wilson is here. And that's why you did all of those other things leading up to this in the first place.
Big-time clutch quarterback play is that important.
