The Pittsburgh Steelers have scored at least 30 points twice this season. They happen to have come in the past two weeks with third-stringer Mason Rudolph starting at quarterback. The offense did not manage to put up that many points in any of Kenny Pickett’s 12 starts or in Mitch Trubisky’s two. Pickett has produced 30-plus points of offense exactly once in 24 career starts, a loss to the Cincinnati Bengals last season.
Yet what he did manage was to win games, even if they weren’t pretty. He is 14-6 as a starter when you remove the games in which he played fewer than half the snaps (a total of four losses). The Steelers were 7-4 this season prior to his ankle injury against the Arizona Cardinals, but then they lost three straight, including that one, with Trubisky playing the majority of those snaps or starting.
Head coach Mike Tomlin benched him after two starts, and suddenly the offense is protecting the ball again and putting up points. Following a three-game losing skid, including two losses to two-win teams, they are back where they ought to have been with Rudolph. And it’s hard not to wonder what might have been if they’d made that decision sooner. Or from the beginning. Include former Steelers CB Bryant McFadden in that group.
“I’m happy & mad at the same time because I feel like, if Mason started initially when Kenny got injured, we would be [in] the playoffs for sure”, he wrote on Twitter following Pittsburgh’s 30-23 victory on Sunday evening over the Seattle Seahawks.
While he did not throw a touchdown during the game and the offense leaned heavily on the running of Najee Harris and Jaylen Warren, Rudolph played an efficient game and made most of the plays that were appropriate or needed. He finished completing 18-of-24 passes for 274 yards with no touchdowns and no interceptions and a 112.2 quarterback rating. As with last week, he was sacked just once.
The last time the Steelers had consecutive games of 250-plus net passing yards was in Weeks One and Two of the 2021 season, yet Rudolph managed it in both of his starts while attempting fewer than 30 passes in each.
For the second week in a row, WR George Pickens topped 100 yards, catching seven passes on nine targets for 131. That included a late 24-yard completion to help close out the game. WR Diontae Johnson also added four catches for 76 yards, while TE Pat Freiermuth caught three passes for 44. RB Jaylen Warren caught all four of his targets for 23 yards.
While he has been the Steelers’ third-string quarterback for most of the last two seasons, he has spent the majority of his career as a backup or interim starter. The former third-round draft pick has always been seen as having talent, and six years into the system and its variations, he knows what they want to accomplish.
The offense has looked its most efficient in years with him under center, and that’s a fact. Much of the credit goes to the running backs for that, especially in the win over the Seahawks that included three rushing touchdowns, but would Rudolph have won more than zero games during that three-game losing streak? I think that’s a safe bet. And if they had managed even one win, they would be locked into a postseason spot right now.
