A reported rift arose late in the 2024 season between then-Pittsburgh Steelers QB Russell Wilson and offensive coordinator Arthur Smith. It stemmed, according to Gerry Dulac of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, from Smith not allowing Wilson to change plays at the line of scrimmage. Speaking to the media ahead of Pittsburgh’s second mandatory minicamp session on Wednesday, Smith disputed that idea and said that nothing changed from the process of audibling at the line of scrimmage from Justin Fields to Russell Wilson or any quarterback that he’s ever worked with.
“I know that’s a hot-button issue. Every quarterback’s different, every offensive scheme is different,” Smith said via audio provided by the team’s PR department.
Smith addressed Ben Roethlisberger having the green light to change plays at the line, but Smith said he obviously wasn’t around for how Roethlisberger did things. He said he didn’t do anything in Pittsburgh that he’s hasn’t done at prior stops in terms of quarterback freedom.
“Every quarterback I’ve had, audible is such a vague term. So not getting too deep in the weeds with the scheme, but you’re talking about multiple things that evolve every year depending on who the quarterback is,” Smith said. “Just like we did last year, it didn’t change. It was Justin, Russ, and the way we tried to evolve, it didn’t change.”
Smith said that while the scheme changed to fit Wilson and Fields’ strengths, nothing happened in regard to calling plays at the line. He called it a “fantastical narrative.”
“Those elements, whatever you’re talking about cans, checks, alerts, signals. When you wanna put those in audibles, great, but we never fundamentally changed,” Smith said. “I mean, we obviously schematically shifted to try and play a little bit different with Justin and Russ, but the operation didn’t change. Whatever fantastical narrative was that we’re just calling plays at the line, I don’t know the history of that. I just know what we did in Pittsburgh in ’24, and that didn’t. Our issue at the end of the year, wasn’t good enough, and as a leader, you take accountability, and that’s on you.”
Dulac’s initial reporting on the issue is that Smith stopped letting Wilson change plays at the line of scrimmage after the team’s Week 13 win over the Cincinnati Bengals. The way Smith tells it, Wilson was never calling plays at the line of scrimmage and that he had the same freedom at the line of scrimmage as Justin Fields did.
What Smith did acknowledge is that the team has checks baked into audibles, and the quarterback does have the freedom to audible at the line of scrimmage, although he admitted that audible is a “vague term.” Fields and Wilson seemingly had the same amount of freedom to audible, but Smith is disputing that the Steelers were ever calling plays at the line of scrimmage.
Dulac’s report says that Smith took away Wilson’s ability to audible, which Smith doesn’t seem to confirm, just that the team wasn’t calling plays at the line of scrimmage. It is a little bit interesting to hear Smith flat-out say that Wilson didn’t have any more freedom at the line than Justin Fields, given that Wilson is likely headed to Canton as a Pro Football Hall of Famer and has a Super Bowl ring, while Fields was trying to resurrect his career in Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh’s best offensive performance came during that Week 13 win over the Bengals, when the team put up 44 points. The Steelers scored 27 in Week 14 against the Browns and then never scored more than 17 points the rest of the season and lost their final five games. Smith took the blame for the team’s downfall, which Wilson’s side seemed to attribute to his sudden inability to audible.
It would be easy to assume that Wilson would have more freedom, and it’s going to be interesting to see just how much freedom Aaron Rodgers winds up having with Smith. The two of them have been diving into the playbook and seem to have a good working relationship now, but that was also reportedly the case with Smith and Wilson early on. If Smith limits what Rodgers is allowed to do at the line of scrimmage in terms of audibling, it could cause a similar rift to the reported one between Smith and Wilson.
Smith has a way that he likes to do things with quarterbacks, and that may differ from what the Steelers have had with past offensive coordinators. But Arthur Smith doesn’t seem like he’s willing to change his philosophy and his mindset, and while he said things evolve and change year to year, his thought process on calling plays at the line doesn’t seem to be one of those things that’s changing or evolving.
