Now that the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 2023 season is getting underway after the team finished above .500 but failing to make the postseason last year, we turn our attention to the next chapter of Steelers football and everything that entails. One thing that it means is that some stock evaluations are going to start taking on more specific contexts as we get into the season, reflecting more immediate plusses and minus rather than trends over long periods. The nature of the evaluation, whether short-term or long-term, will be noted in the reasoning section below.
Player: QB Mitch Trubisky
Stock Value: Down
Reasoning: In his first game filling in for the injured Kenny Pickett, Mitch Trubisky came up short. While the defense did not help him much by giving up 21 first-half points to an awful offense, he did himself no favors, either. While he finished with 190 passing yards, the team had just 60 net yards in the first half.
Things are not going well in the early goings of Mitch Trubisky’s tenure as fill-in for Kenny Pickett. Down with an ankle injury, he is expected to miss a few games, giving Trubisky plenty of time to prove his worth to the team.
It says a lot that after his first start, many people are calling for Mason Rudolph to take his place. While there was already a contingent that believed Rudolph should be ahead of him, he had a chance to go out there and stake his claim to the primary backup role. Now head coach Mike Tomlin is fielding questions about whether he entertained any thoughts about making a change.
And that’s all on Trubisky. It didn’t help that he threw an interception and could have had another pass or two picked off on top of that. His decision-making was very questionable, including taking a deep shot down the field on 4th and 2 in a critical moment. Even assuming that was the read they wanted him to take, he didn’t make the throw it would have taken to make the play.
By the way, 45 of Trubisky’s yards came on a largely meaningless final possession that began from the 13-yard line with 15 seconds to play. The Steelers had no timeouts remaining and he could not find the sidelines. He was fortunate that Diontae Johnson was able to get out of bounds on his first pass, but the only thing Allen Robinson II could do on the second was to try to throw the ball up and hope a teammate would come down with it as he was being tackled.
To be fair, Trubisky was preparing to start on a short week, and perhaps he will look better with a full week to get ready for the next game—assuming he starts the next game. But the backup quarterback is supposed to be able to step into a game cold and keep it moving. Yet the Steelers went three-and-out five times.
