Reading into reps during the first day of OTAs is a dangerous game. But it’s always good to have a starting point to evaluate throughout the rest of the offseason and into the summer. Mason Rudolph provided that mark Tuesday, telling reporters how the Steelers split quarterback reps during day one of OTAs.
“Today we were pretty evenly split,” he said in a video on the team website. “The repetitions are not up to me. Whatever Coach Sullivan and Canada and Mike Tomlin want to divvy out to me, I’m gonna make the most of and move on the next day.”
Rudolph did not specify who ran with what group or if they mixed and matched, though reports hint at Trubisky leading off with the ones today.
A logical beginning point for the team. Pittsburgh is in one of the few times that there’s a truly wide open quarterback battle between incumbent Mason Rudolph and newcomers Mitch Trubisky and Kenny Pickett. The organization will use the rest of the offseason to figure out who their best option is. But determining reps will be the key and the tricky part. Rudolph his going on year five with the Steelers, and the team knows him well. Their focus needs to be on giving Trubisky and Pickett as many looks as possible, two players with higher ceilings and ones that need more time to be evaluated.
Reps are something we won’t be able to track during OTAs but they’re something we’ll pay close attention to once camp begins. It’s something we began tracking last year. Though circumstances are different entering this season, here’s how the 2021 camp reps played out across 13 open practices.
Mason Rudolph: 215
Dwayne Haskins: 200
Ben Roethlisberger: 166
Josh Dobbs: 88
It’s hard to imagine Rudolph getting over 200 snaps in team drills again while Trubisky and Pickett should – and need – to blow past that number. If we assume the same number of 669 team reps last year, things could look like this in 2022 (barring injury, of course).
Mitch Trubisky: 234
Kenny Pickett: 230
Mason Rudolph: 137
Chris Oladokun: 68
Predicting reps based off last year is a little tricky due to Roethlisberger’s full-day, half-day, off-day schedule, but the point remains that Trubisky and Pickett are the new faces and need as much time as possible. You can bet that in nearly every two-minute drill the team runs in camp, it’ll be those two getting first- and second-team reps. Rudolph and seventh-round pick Chris Oladokun may be the odd men out throughout this process as Trubisky and Pickett duke it out.
