Mike Tomlin sends warning to Justin Fields after preseason debut

Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin liked what he saw from Justin Fields during the quarterback’s preseason debut Friday, but one issue marred the entire performance in his eyes.

Fields went 5-for-6 passing for 67 yards, but fumbled a snap on two drives in a 20-12 loss to Houston. As far as Tomlin was concerned, the two failed snap exchanges negated the rest of the performance.

“I thought he did some nice things,” Tomlin said, via Brooke Pryor of ESPN. “But obviously he was a component of the C-Q exchange, and from my perspective that’s dual responsibility on the center and the quarterback. It negated a lot of good things going on in those first couple of drives.”

The Steelers did recover both fumbles, but the incidents backed them up and led to a pair of three-and-outs. Fields was also sacked twice.

Standards are high in Pittsburgh, if Fields did not already know. He probably has to be very good in order to win the starting job away from Russell Wilson, who clearly appears to be in the driver’s seat for the job. He cannot really afford mistakes like that, no matter how good he was in other aspects of his performance.