The Pittsburgh Steelers secured victory at home Saturday in a 34-11 blowout win over the Cincinnati Bengals. All of the storylines leading up to this game were about the Steelers losing their way and all the negativity that comes with a three-game losing streak. QB Mason Rudolph was named the starter earlier in the week over Mitch Trubisky and had a stellar performance—one of the best quarterback performances in years for the Steelers.
Head coach Mike Tomlin spoke to the media following the big win and was asked about Rudolph’s performance.
“He was Mason,” Tomlin said in a video posted on the team’s YouTube page. “We talked about it early in the week. He’s got a belief in himself. He’s aggressive in his play style, and I thought he did a really good job not displaying a lot of rust for a guy who hadn’t played obviously a lot.”
Rudolph had not started a game since 2021 in a 16-16 tie to the Detroit Lions. He has now started 11 games and improved his record to 6-4-1. He started out hot right out of the gate. On the second play of the Steelers’ first offensive drive, Rudolph found WR George Pickens for an 86-yard touchdown pass. The two connected on another pair of deep completions. One was a 44-yard shot along the sideline where Pickens had very little room to tap both feet in bounds. The other was a 66-yard touchdown where Pickens broke away from defenders on his way to a big score.
“We came in with that mentality,” Tomlin said when asked about the aggressiveness from Rudolph and the offense. “All week, we talked about scared money not making money. And so, that’s kind of the mentality as we went into the week.”
With defensive injuries piling up, including another in-game one to Elandon Roberts, and a new quarterback starting, the Steelers could have come out and featured a very safe game plan. Trubisky’s unchecked aggression got them into trouble the last couple weeks, after all. But the team opted to come out swinging and it paid off in a big way. The Steelers held a seven-point lead after the first quarter and a 24-point lead entering halftime.
Tomlin’s comment about “scared money not making money” rings true for Rudolph, who signed a one-year extension this past offseason for the league minimum. It remains to be seen if he will get more opportunities this season but that one strong performance could be parlayed into a nice payday for Rudolph in Pittsburgh or elsewhere.
The team’s playoff chances remain thin, but a loss would have all but eliminated the Steelers from contention. Rudolph played hero for the city of Pittsburgh right before Christmas.
