No team was more chaotic at the NFL trade deadline than the New York Jets. They sold off two of their cornerstone defensive players, Sauce Gardner and Quinnen Williams, for a bucket of high draft picks and a couple of young players. Teams around the league, including the Pittsburgh Steelers, looked to get in on the action with other players on their roster, but the Jets turned them down.
While those other players included the likes of Breece Hall and Jermaine Johnson, the Steelers might have had some interest in landing Garrett Wilson, their top wideout. According to reports, plenty of teams called, but the Jets weren’t interested in moving their No.1 receiver.
That move wasn’t just a kick in the shins for the Steelers, who ended up doing nothing at the deadline. It spells certain doom for former Steelers quarterback Justin Fields, too.
Pittsburgh Steelers miss out as Jets’ rebuild officially leaves Justin Fields in the dust
The Jets probably could have gotten a touch more for Wilson in the trade market than the Raiders did for Jakobi Meyers or the Saints did for Rashid Shaheed. But their decision to stay put was a clear indication of their future plans, which don’t appear to include Fields whatsoever.
With the Jets blowing up their young core of superstar talent, they know an extensive rebuild is on the horizon with the bevy of picks they have acquired. They now have five first-round picks over the next two drafts, and it’s quite clear that those picks will be used to invest in a new quarterback and the necessary pieces to build around whoever that may end up being.
Clearly, Wilson is a part of those plans for the future of the offense.
Whether the next quarterback goes to New York via trade or by actually using those picks remains to be seen. Either way, the Jets are clearly done with the Justin Fields experiment.
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It’s not overly surprising that the Jets would send such an obvious message to Fields, even at the halfway point of the season. He was benched in the loss to Carolina two weeks ago but held onto his job after Tyrod Taylor suffered an injury that kept him out of the Cincinnati game, which the Jets miraculously won.
Fields played well in that game, but with the Jets at 1-7 on the season, they’ve run out of patience with his substandard performances outside of two strong games against Pittsburgh and Cincinnati.
Nonetheless, Steelers fans are frustrated that the team didn’t make good on its hints to make a move for a new wide receiver at the deadline. After watching the team miss out on Meyers and Shaheed, a lot of eyes in Western PA turned to Wilson in the Big Apple. But the Jets' unwillingness to move him for the sake of their future felt like a slap in the face.