The Pittsburgh Steelers won their second straight game to keep their playoff hopes alive entering the final week of the season. QB Mason Rudolph got his second straight start despite Kenny Pickett seemingly being healthy enough to play, and he made the most of it once again. He threw 24 pass attempts and completed 18 of them for 274 yards. There were no touchdown passes this week, but that is mostly because the running game did most of the heavy lifting. Rudolph finished the game with a passer rating for 112.2.
All the talk of a quarterback controversy leading up to this Week 17 game will pale in comparison to the chatter this upcoming week. Now there is no guise of a Pickett injury continuing to hold him out and head coach Mike Tomlin will have to bench Pickett in order to continue riding the hot hand of Rudolph. In his postgame press conference posted on the Steelers’ YouTube page, Tomlin was asked about who would start in Week 18.
“We’ll talk about that next week,” Tomlin said after the Steelers beat the Seattle Seahawks, 30-23. “Right now we are just appreciative of the victory, and we’ll give you guys something to buzz about for the next 24 [hours] or so.”
It is a good problem for the Steelers to have, the result of back-to-back wins, but it is a problem nonetheless. Pickett was selected in the first round just two drafts ago and Tomlin has repeatedly backed him as the quarterback of the future, often citing “football justice.” His assertion is that Pickett works hard and prepares like a professional and things usually work out for those types of guys.
The next we will hear from Tomlin is on Tuesday for his weekly press conference. Last week he named Rudolph the starter, but with the caveat that the team would wait and see on Pickett’s health. This week, that will not be as easy to get away with. Tomlin is going to have to make an uncomfortable decision either way.
