Steelers Know What to Expect Against Justin Fields

As the Pittsburgh Steelers look to get off to a fast start this season in their Week 1 matchup against the New York Jets, their defense will look to limit a familiar face in quarterback Justin Fields at MetLife Stadium.

During his press conference on Tuesday, head coach Mike Tomlin acknowledged that the Jets will center their offense around the run game, which Fields will play a major role in.

"You can't talk about the run game without talking about Justin's physical abilities in that area and the challenges that it may present to us," Tomlin said. "Certainly he didn't do a lot of running, by design and so forth, in the preseason, but it's reasonable to expect there to be some design [in the] running game. He had it in Chicago, he had it with us. I think if you've got a guy with his type of talents, it's somewhat common sense to have some designed run game for the quarterback position and make people play 11-on-11 football."

The Jets brought in a new regime this offseason, with former Detroit Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn taking over as head coach. Former Lions passing game coordinator Tanner Engstrand followed him to the Big Apple and will serve as the team's offensive coordinator, marking the first time he's ever held that role in the NFL.

Though there's plenty of Lions tape out there for the Steelers to parse through in preparation for their meeting with the Jets, there's still a level of uncertainty as to how their offense will look in their first regular season game under Engstrand.

What is rather clear, however, is that New York will utilize Fields' legs with regularity, and Tomlin listed all of his qualities that make him stand out from other mobile quarterbacks in the league while also stating that he isn't counting on the Jets deploying him in a particularly unique fashion on the ground.

"He's unique because he is who he is," Tomlin said. "He's stronger than most mobile quarterbacks. That's a component of his game that I think is unique. He's a really talented guy physically. He's not easy to bring down, he's got a real solid base about him. He's big, and so when I think about what might be different, I think about his unique physical skill set, but in terms of schematics, I don't know that the things that they do are gonna be uniquely different from others."