The Pittsburgh Steelers are now into the regular season, following the most unique offseason in the NFL since at least World War II. While it didn’t involve a player lockout, teams still did not have physical access to their players, though they were at least able to meet with them virtually.
Even training camp looked much different from the norm, and a big part of that was the fact that there will be no games along the way to prepare for. Their first football game of the year was to be the opener against the New York Giants.
As the season progresses, however, there will be a number of questions that arise on a daily basis, and we will do our best to try to raise attention to them as they come along, in an effort to both point them out and to create discussion
Questions like, how will the players who are in new positions this year going to perform? Will the rookies be able to contribute significantly? How will Ben Roethlisberger look—and the other quarterbacks as well? Now, we even have questions about whether or not players will be in quarantine.
These are the sorts of questions among many others that we have been exploring on a daily basis and will continue to do so. Football has become a year-round pastime and there is always a question to be asked, though there is rarely a concrete answer, as I’ve learned in my years of doing this.
Question: Will the Steelers dress all three quarterbacks on Sunday, with Mason Rudolph as the backup and Joshua Dobbs as a sub-package player?
During his pre-game press conference yesterday, head coach Mike Tomlin made it clear that the continued usage of quarterback Joshua Dobbs in sub-package play remains an option. He also said that it is possible that Dobbs would dress as Ben Roethlisberger’s backup as a result of that, or they might possibly dress all three.
Given the way that Mason Rudolph played this past Sunday, I have a hard time believing that the Steelers would sit him in case they need somebody to come into the game and take over for Roethlisberger. There’s a reason he’s been dressing all season, and he played arguably the best football of his career, so it would be rather surprising.
I think, personally, it’s more likely that either Dobbs does not dress, or dresses in addition to Rudolph. In the case of the latter, it would require that somebody who otherwise would dress for the game would not dress.
There are always ways to figure such things out if you want it bad enough of course, which is what the New Orleans Saints have done all year with Taysom Hill, even though he would later be Drew Brees’ replacement starter over Jameis Winston.
