In all likelihood, three of the Pittsburgh Steelers four quarterbacks will play Thursday night in the team’s preseason opener against the Philadelphia Eagles. The one who we know right now will definitely sit out the Thursday night road game is starter Ben Roethlisberger, as head coach Mike Tomlin confirmed that obvious move during his Tuesday morning press conference.
“I haven’t determined how I’m going to utilize them in totality other than Ben will not play,” Tomlin said when asked if he knows how he’ll utilize his quarterbacks against the Eagles.
Tomlin was later asked during his press conference if indeed the three other quarterbacks, Landry Jones, Joshua Dobbs and Mason Rudolph, will all play Thursday night against the Eagles.
“That is our intentions, yes,” Tomlin said. “But again, I’ve said that to you before and game circumstances play out a little bit differently. So I’m just being as transparent as I can with you guys. That is our intentions.”
Because Jones played a extremely high amount of preseason snaps several years ago. Tomlin was asked Tuesday if that now changes or effects his approach to quarterback snap counts during the exhibition season.
“You know, we’re just taking it week-to-week because week-to-week the variables could change,” Tomlin said. “Who’s available to us and stuff could change next week. So I don’t look at the totality of it. I have a plan in terms of how I want to approach this week. I’ll harden that plan as I get closer to game time and really I don’t get any deeper than it than that. There’s so many variables at play it’s a waste of time to delve into some of those thoughts and discussions.”
It’s probably a good bet that Jones will ultimately start Thursday night against the Eagles. As far as how much he’ll play and which quarterback will relieve him, we can only speculate that Dobbs will go second with Rudolph closing things out in the second half. Obviously, Tomlin might ultimately wind up having different plans than that, so we’ll just have to wait and see how things play out.
