Barring measurement by game-winning drives, in which they led the league, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ quarterback room was certainly nothing special, and that was with Pro Bowl players at wide receiver and running back, and a rookie tight end with seven red-zone scores.
And so the question becomes, what do they have this year? The 2021 season was the farewell tour for the great Ben Roethlisberger, who, let’s face it, was no longer great. He is now retired, with only Mason Rudolph returning from last season’s roster. To the room was added veteran free agent Mitch Trubisky, and then through the first and seventh rounds of the draft, respectively, Kenny Pickett and Chris Oladokun.
Trubisky is being viewed as the starter for now, but Pickett is the starter for the future, or so that was the inevitable plan when he was drafted. But the quarterbacks in the room aren’t focused so much on their individual roles as they are on collectively contributing to winning.
“We have high expectations in that building. They’ve been an unbelievable franchise really since it started, so I just want to continue that greatness”, Pickett told Pat McAfee recently. And he also talked about how Trubisky and Rudolph have been helping the rookies.
“Mitch has been awesome. Really, every quarterback in the room has been awesome”, he said. “We all work together, we bounce ideas off of each other. He’s been a great resource to have, along with all of the other quarterbacks, when I have questions. They’ve been in the league some time now, him and Mason”.
Trubisky is a sixth-year veteran, a 50-game starter, though he spent the 2021 season as the backup to Josh Allen with the Buffalo Bills. Rudolph has been Roethlisberger’s backup for the past three seasons and is 5-4-1 as the starter of record in his career.
As I wrote about yesterday, Pickett also talked about his close relationship with the other rookie quarterback, Oladokun. “Chris Oladokun came in with me, and we’ve been kind of attached at the hip”, he told McAfee. “We do pretty much everything together. Extra meeting time, film, going over the playbook and everything. Everyone’s kind of moving towards the same direction”.
While Trubisky and Pickett are givens to be on the 53-man roster, only one of Rudolph or Oladokun will make the team, and the advantage probably does not go to the rookie seventh-round pick. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a chance, but he will be starting form the bottom, and opportunities will be scarce, especially when you have two quarterbacks new to the team who are competing for the starting job.
At the end of the day, however, it’s all in the effort of one common goal, which is to make the room better, thereby making the team better as a whole and contributing to the cause of winning. They all want to be a part of that, and that involves helping each other grow.
