As Matthew Marczi wrote about yesterday, draft analyst Emory Hunt is high on Pittsburgh Steelers’ UDFA QB Tanner Morgan. Once a college star and potential first-round pick, Morgan backslid over his final years at Minnesota and fell out of the 2023 draft entirely. He signed as the Steelers’ most expensive undrafted free agent, earning a relatively hefty $25,000 signing bonus.
Maybe Hunt is right and Morgan will be a gem. There’s one big question though. Will the Steelers allow him to shine?
With Mason Rudolph’s surprising return, Morgan is relegated to fourth on the team’s depth chart. Meaning he’s slotted in the same position 7th-round pick Chris Oladokun was last season. And you know the story there. Oladokun simply didn’t receive any reps in training camp until the final few days of practice. According to our camp stats, he threw only 15 passes (the next “closest” was Kenny Pickett with 160), and took just 19 total reps in team drills, 245 fewer than Pickett. He was released before final cutdowns and eventually picked up by the Kansas City Chiefs, earning a Super Bowl ring with them. So at least it wasn’t all bad.
Is Morgan set up to be in the same position? There’s real potential for that to happen. Each team session in practice gets about 12 reps, meaning there’s three units that get to swap in. It’s usually goes in a 4-4-4 rotation, first string, second string, third string. Which leaves out any fourth stringers. For most other positions, there’s still chances to at least rotate players in throughout the day. When players are hurt or given veteran days off, it opens up a slot for a fourth-string guy to bump up a spot.
At quarterback, that doesn’t often happen. They don’t get hit in practice so injuries are less common. In past years, 4th-string quarterbacks did get reps when Ben Roethlisberger would get reps off. He would follow a full-half-off day rotation and on the latter two practices, the fourth-string arm would bump to third string and receive a fair amount of reps.
That didn’t occur in 2022. Mitch Trubisky, Rudolph, and Pickett stayed healthy and never received days off as the team did as much fact-finding about the quarterback position as possible. That left Oladokun without a purpose, aside from throwing a couple of balls in individual/skeleton drills.
If Pittsburgh handles the quarterback room the same in 2023, and all the names in front of Morgan are back, then he’ll find himself in the same position. His only chance is hoping the Steelers manage the room differently. And that’s possible. There’s greater clarity this year. Pickett is the unquestioned starter, Trubisky the clear #2, and Rudolph is the #3. The team knows more about all those guys. Which could result in Trubisky or, more likely, Rudolph getting a day off or ceding a couple of reps to Morgan.
Even if that’s the case, it might not result in that many more reps. If Rudolph gets even every third day off, that’s still roughly only 60-70 total reps for Morgan and roughly 40-50 passes over the course of 16 practices. A lot more than Oladokun, sure, but still a small sample size that may not give the team confidence to get Morgan in a game.
The best thing Morgan can do is maximize every opportunity he gets. Make the team want to take a longer look at you. That means excelling in whatever team reps he gets but just as importantly, excelling in the classroom, absorbing the playbook, and taking mental reps. He has to be an active participant even if he’s not active in practice. And if the Steelers want to get a feel for their quarterback room top to bottom, they need to play all their guys.
