As one Pittsburgh Steelers fan aptly put it in the comment section: “Babe wake up! [The] new [Russell Wilson] hype vid just dropped!”
Yinzer nation has grown accustomed to Wilson’s calculated posts and high-quality video edits since his arrival this spring, and the more the Steelers win with the veteran quarterback at the helm, the more fans seem to buy in on social media. Ahead of a huge Week 15 matchup with the Pennsylvania rival Philadelphia Eagles, the signal-caller only had one word for his followers.
“Unleash,” Wilson wrote on Instagram on December 13, seemingly urging his team on while also tagging the Steelers account in the caption.
As usual, the Week 15 theme appeared to stem from a Mike Tomlin quote, which Wilson included audio of in his video.
“We’re gon’ unleash hell here in December, because we have to,” Tomlin’s voice states at the beginning of the edit.
The video message then transitions into lyrics from the famed Michael Jackson song, “Thriller,” which read: “Darkness falls across the land. The midnight hour is close at hand. Creatures crawl in search of blood. To terrorize y’all’s neighborhood. And whosoever shall be found. Without the soul for getting down. Must stand and face the hounds of hell. And rot inside a corpse’s shell.”
As the Thriller music continues in the background and Steelers highlights play across the screen, Tomlin’s voice comes back into focus.
“We will not go gently,” the legendary head coach says. “We won’t go in a shell; we will go in attack mode.”
Followed by a different Tomlin quote, which adds: “Those are the men that are going to comprise a team that is capable of hoisting that damn Lombardi.”
The Instagram post has over 23,000 likes in approximately nine hours.
Steelers Must Beat Eagles Without Star WR George Pickens
For the second straight week, star wide receiver George Pickens was ruled out with a hamstring injury on December 13. His absence didn’t stop Wilson and the offense from getting the job done against the Cleveland Browns a week ago, but it’s no secret that the Eagles present a tougher challenge.
Jalen Hurts, Saquon Barkley, A.J. Brown and the star-studded Philly offense get a ton of attention, but the franchise’s defensive improvements have flown way under the radar in 2024.
The Eagles have allowed a league-leading 4.7-yard average per play this season. For the sake of comparison, the Steelers defense has allowed 5.3 yards per play.
Philadelphia has been especially impressive against the pass. They rank No. 1 in the NFL in net yards gained per pass attempt, and second overall in total passing yards allowed behind the Tennessee Titans.
2024 first-round cornerback Quinyon Mitchell is a big reason for that, as is veteran counterpart Darius Slay.
This pair of CBs would have surely been a difficult test for Pickens, let alone a WR corps led by Van Jefferson, Calvin Austin III and Mike Williams. But as Tomlin stated in Wilson’s message, the Steelers will not “go in a shell” despite Pickens’ absence, they will “go in attack mode” as they always do.
That mentality welcomes adversity with the mantra: “Next man up.”
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