Nobody was surprised yesterday when the Pittsburgh Steelers announced QB Mason Rudolph would start Sunday’s game against the Seattle Seahawks. It would have been a shock a month earlier, of course, but, well, things change.
Some may wonder if the starting lineup itself hasn’t changed. Ostensibly, Rudolph is supposedly starting because Kenny Pickett is still not fully healed coming back from an ankle injury. But Rudolph also just played the best game a Steelers quarterback has had in years. Even his next opponent has noticed.
“Looked great the other night, dropped some dimes on them, and made some huge plays, and gave them a real spark where they jumped to 21 to zip right off the bat”, Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll said of Rudolph, via the Steelers’ website. “It’s obvious that he lifted them. They got great play out of other guys too, turnovers and all of that helped, but he was right in the middle of all of that”.
More to the point, Rudolph went 17-for-27 throwing for 290 yards with two touchdowns and zero interceptions. He maintained a healthy 10.7 yards per pass attempt, which was a bit deeper than his average depth of target (thanks largely to the 86-yard slant-route touchdown from WR George Pickens on his first pass attempt).
It was the first game by a Steelers quarterback since the 2021 season, by Ben Roethlisberger. In fact, he is the only quarterback other than Roethlisberger to have multiple such games in team history since Tommy Maddox. Landry Jones managed it once. Charlie Batch? Byron Leftwich? Never. Not once. Certainly not Mitch Trubisky. Kenny Pickett? Nope. Just Big Mas’.
“He’s been around for a few years. He’s started a number of games”, Carroll pointed out, though he had not played significant snaps prior to their last game since 2021. “We’ve got all kinds of film on him, so we can see him. Big strong armed, good-looking kid”.
And not really a kid anymore, either. He’s 28 years old now, four years removed from the vast bulk of that film to which Carroll refers. But he would probably be wise to focus more on the tape from the last game than what he was doing in 2019 to get a better sense of what he’s in for. After all, the entire team around him is different.
Now, there’s no disputing the obvious reality that Rudolph’s play in the last game made a difference. At the same time, we have to acknowledge generally how low the bar for quarterback performance has gotten in Pittsburgh.
After all, they are the only team in the league to have just one game over the past two seasons in which a quarterback has thrown for 250-plus yards and two-plus touchdowns. Even the New York Giants managed two, this year. So perhaps to talk about how impressive it was for Rudolph to lift the Steelers is a bit premature.
