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As the Pittsburgh Steelers start the season hot at 3-0 after last Sunday's win over the Los Angeles Chargers, one has to look at the offense led by quarterback Justin Fields. While Fields looks to start again for the Steelers in Week 4, another new component of the offense has been new offensive coordinator and former Atlanta Falcons head coach Arthur Smith.
Funny enough, Fields would talk about Smith and the type of trash talker he is as he experienced it when the young signal-caller was with his former team in the Chicago Bears. He was on the “Not Just Football” podcast with Steelers teammate Cameron Heyward where he spoke about the trash talk Smith would spout at Fields.
“The past two years we played him with Chicago when he was in Atlanta,” Fields said. “He’s a trash talker dog. He used to be talking crazy.”
“I forgot what he said to me last year but he’s always chirping every time I’ve played him,” Fields continued. “He’s always chirping, yelling like, ‘we know what they’re doing,’ ‘he’s a running back.’ My second year I remember saying god d****t, something like that, because he can get riled up a little bit. That year we were doing a lot of the same stuff on 3rd downs. Like we were doing a lot of QB sweeps, catch and just run to the right. So he was like ‘d*mn it, how do we not know where it’s going, he’s a d*mn running back.’ he cracked me up. Last year we were whooping up on him pretty bad, and he tried to say something slick. I was definitely talking back too just from the year before.”
Steelers' Justin Fields praises Arthur Smith for competitiveness
The offense so far has stayed afloat under Fields and Smith though they look to improve as they have yet to exceed 20 points in each of their three wins. On the other hand, Fields would say that to have the “competitive spirit” in Steelers offensive coordinator in Smith is crucial.
“It’s been great with him so far just his competitive spirit,” Fields said. “He’s really smart he knows how to detail plays to his players strength so it’s been great.”
Fields wouldn't be the only player to praise Smith as Pittsburgh wide receiver Calvin Austin III said to NBC Sports that the offense operates under “no panic” now as he mostly credits the new coach.
“It used to be a lot of you know looking around and searching but I feel like now it’s no panic,” Austin said. “We got the answers. It’s just about we go over, and we look at the iPad, clean up what we got to clean up. We talk about what plans we like next and we go out and we execute. It’s simple, you know?”
“It’s everybody I would say, but definitely Coach [Arthur] Smith,” Austin continued. “He always… checks in with us after each drive, what we like, what we don’t like, what we’ve been seeing. The quarterbacks, Justin [Fields], Russ [Wilson], Kyle [Allen], they always do a good job of just communicating to us and talking to us, so that definitely goes a long way.”
The Steelers look to remain undefeated as they face the Indianapolis Colts this Sunday.
