By Will Graves

The Associated Press

PITTSBURGH — Mike Tomlin could have played safety. He could have stuck with Justin Fields. He could have settled for the weekly rock fights that have been the trademark of the Pittsburgh Steelers for half a decade and more.

The NFL’s longest tenured coach, however, knew he hadn’t seen enough. Neither did Fields or the rest of the offense.

So Tomlin pulled Fields days after a relatively easy 19-point win over Las Vegas on Oct. 13 that improved Pittsburgh’s record to 4-2 and told Fields it was time to see if Russell Wilson, now fully recovered from a calf injury. , he could still cook.

Asked if it was a tough call considering Fields accounted for 10 touchdowns against one turnover, Tomlin shrugged.

“I don’t worry about the difficulty of the conversations,” he said at the time. “It’s about whether or not they are necessary. We’re after big business here. Comfort is not a component of what we’re after.”

Nor, it seems, is complacency.

The NFL’s most stable franchise is evolving, working with a kind of urgency it may have lacked at times during a playoff drought that’s seven years and counting.

It’s why the Steelers blew up the quarterback room during the offseason, and why Tomlin reached out to Wilson in mid-October and essentially said, “Let’s see what you got.”

Looks like more gas in the tank than Wilson’s abrupt exit from Denver would lead people to believe.

The 35-year-old threw for 542 yards with three touchdowns and no interceptions in wins over the New York Jets and New York Giants. The offense topped 400 yards in both games, something the Steelers hadn’t done in back-to-back weeks since 2018.

It’s a promising start, though Wilson admitted it’s only a start.

“We’re very confident (but) we haven’t done everything yet,” Wilson said. “Obviously we’re sitting here at 6-2, which is a great thing, but it doesn’t mean anything.”

Making the playoffs hasn’t been the issue for Pittsburgh, which has made the postseason in three of the last four years. The problem has been that the Steelers often look outmatched once they get there, lacking the firepower to keep up with teams like the Bills and Chiefs.

That could change in 2024. Pittsburgh has reached 20 points in five of its last six games, something it hasn’t done since an 11-0 start to 2020, taking some of the pressure off a defense that has spent the last three years. well aware that he could not afford to enter into a firefight.

While cornerback Joey Porter Jr. played down the idea that the defense has more wiggle room than usual — trotting out a variation on Tomlin’s “the standard is the standard” motto — Pittsburgh’s ability to score more often it allowed defensive coordinator Teryl Austin to be even more aggressive.

The Steelers are tied for second in the NFL with 15 takeaways, many of them momentum-changing, such as TJ Watt’s sack of Daniel Jones and Beanie Bishop’s emphatic fourth-quarter interception against the Giants, part of what what outside linebackers coach Denzel Martin describes. as a “culture” of turnover.

There are even custom t-shirts. The coaches will hand them out after Saturday’s classes. They come with their own color code. Take one, it’s a white shirt. Take two, it’s a gray shirt. Take three, it’s a black shirt. Watt and Bishop are collecting them with increasing frequency.

However, not everything is perfect. The Giants held the Steelers to 157 yards rushing, not the best mark for a team whose second-half schedule includes four combined games against Baltimore, Washington and Philadelphia, three of the most productive running teams in league.

New York’s on-field productivity was a bold and, in some ways, welcome reminder of the considerable work ahead.

“I think it’s good to be able to win in spite of sometimes,” Austin said. “And so I’m very confident that our group comes back and helps us get better when we line up and keep playing.”

It’s a methodology that trickles down from the top.

Tomlin’s message when he switched quarterbacks was simple: Good is no longer good enough. While Watt and defensive end Cam Heyward — now the longest-tenured defensive player in team history — are building Hall of Fame-worthy resumes, neither has reached a Super Bowl. Watt, in fact, is still waiting for his first playoff win.

“We can’t get comfortable because we know we just got there, we’ve got a lot of tough, tough games, a lot of tough ball in front of us,” outside linebacker Alex Highsmith said. “And so we know our ultimate goal. And so we know that we must always want to be better and have that championship detail.”

Something Wilson knows little about. He arrived in Pittsburgh in March looking to revive his career after two disastrous seasons with the Broncos. It’s early — very early — but his play so far has validated Tomlin’s decision to change the status quo and may put Pittsburgh on a path that has been a slippery slope since reaching the 2016 AFC Championship.

“You want to be growing as you go,” Wilson said. “I think we’re on that journey right now. We are on that train of continuing to grow. I think that’s an exciting thing for this football team, what we do, how we do it.”