The Pittsburgh Steelers’ 2021 season is over, already eliminated from the postseason after suffering a 42-21 loss at the hands of Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs. They just barely made the postseason with a 9-7-1 record and a little help from their friends.
This is an offseason of major change, with the retirement of Ben Roethlisberger, the possible retirement of general manager Kevin Colbert, and the decisions about the futures of many important players to be made, such as Joe Haden, Stephon Tuitt, JuJu Smith-Schuster, and others.
Aside from exploring their options at the quarterback position, the top global priority, once again, figures to be addressing the offensive line, which they did not do quite adequately enough a year ago. Dan Moore Jr. looks like he may have a future as a full-time starter, but Kendrick Green was clearly not ready. Chukwuma Okorafor is heading into free agency, as is Trai Turner.
These are the sorts of topics 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. There is rarely a concrete answer, but this is your venue for exploring the topics we present through all their uncertainty.
Question: Who would you guess, as of today, is the Steelers’ starting quarterback for the 2022 season opener?
With the dominos starting to fall on the quarterback market—including the trade market, the Steelers are inching closer to some kind of move of their own. As of this writing, they have only Mason Rudolph under contract, though are expected to retain Dwayne Haskins as well.
General manager Kevin Colbert has already stated that they will go to training camp with four quarterbacks, as they always do. One of those could be no more than a rookie college free agent, but the other one is likely to be a highly significant player—perhaps their starter.
So if you were to guess, as of today, who is it most likely to be? I’m guessing that Rudolph will be a popular answer (though not a popular choice), so I want to do this in two steps: First choose whether Rudolph or somebody other than Rudolph will be the starter. Then if you choose the latter, choose a specific name.
While Mike Florio has claimed that the Steelers spoke to Aaron Rodgers’ people, they have been more realistically connected with a trade market for Jimmy Garoppolo. They have also been tied to names like free agents Mitchell Trubisky and Jameis Winston, the latter of whom is recovering from injury.
There are, of course, other options that will be available a week from now, and there is the NFL Draft. Drafting a rookie doesn’t mean he’s going to start right away, though.
So will it be Rudolph? And if not, then who? A week out from the start of the ‘legal tampering’ period, what is your intuition telling you about who will be throwing the Steelers’ first pass of 2022?
