‘You have to practice’: Van Jefferson stresses importance of scramble drill with new QB room

The big storyline all offseason around the Pittsburgh Steelers revolves around their quarterback room. Even with three different guys spending significant time under center last year, the position group is completely new heading into 2024.

While most focus on the potential position battle between Russell Wilson and Justin Fields, there are many smaller implications of an entirely new QB room that have gone unnoticed.

On the one hand, the players will have a new leader in the locker room, but you can at least feel pretty good about that with Russell Wilson, and it’s not like the players they had last year were true veterans.

Another adjustment for the team, and one that WR Van Jefferson touched on in an interview with OTA, is that Wilson and Fields tend to extend plays a lot, especially compared to the trio of Kenny Pickett, Mason Rudolph and Mitch Trubisky. In a video provided by the team, Jefferson talked about the adjustments needed to play with a mobile quarterback.

“You have to practice,” Jefferson said. “We do different things here to train for that. You have two quarterbacks that can extend plays and both are known for that and they do a great job. So as receivers, we always have to be on the lookout, when they’re scrambling, what direction they’re going and get into the QB’s vision, so he can make a play.”

Take a young receiver like George Pickens, who has played mostly with Pickett and Rudolph in his two years in the NFL. This will be something of a transition for a guy like him. He will have to at least be aware of the plays that go on and be ready to throw a loose ball after running his intended route.

So it’s important, as Jefferson said, to practice the scrambling drill a lot before the season starts. I think we’ll see a ton of that in training camp, with Wilson and Fields under center. The league meta is moving more and more toward guys who are mobile and can at least extend plays, but there are still plenty of weapons on this team that haven’t had a guy like that who throws them the ball at the NFL level.

I think it’s easy to look at the Steelers’ lousy passing numbers, look at the talent of Wilson and Fields, and instantly assume that adding either guy would lead to better QB play. That’s probably going to be the case, but there’s more nuance to it than people realize. This will be a new-look offense, and while it’s hard to imagine that new-look offense being any worse than the one that started 2023, it’s still going to require adjustments from the team as a whole.