The Steelers’ 2023 season has been put out of its misery, ending as so many have before in recent years: a disappointing, blowout playoff loss. The only change-up lately is when they miss the playoffs altogether. But with the Buffalo Bills stamping them out in the Wildcard Round, they have another long offseason to look forward to.
The biggest question hanging over the team as we speak is the future of head coach Mike Tomlin. While a firing seems unlikely, speculation has been rampant about his continuing. When asked about his contract status after the loss to the Bills, he walked away mid-question.
Beyond that, there is…the quarterback question. Is Kenny Pickett the guy? Will he get another season’s reprieve without a challenge? How will the team address the depth chart? Do they re-sign Mason Rudolph, one of few significant unrestricted free agents?
The Steelers are swirling with more questions this offseason than usual, frankly, though the major free agent list is less substantial than usual. It’s just a matter of…what happens next? Where do they go from here? How do they find the way forward?
Question: Will Mason Rudolph be Kenny Pickett’s competition for the starting quarterback job?
While head coach Mike Tomlin did acknowledge Kenny Pickett as his starter moving into the 2024 season during his post-season press conference yesterday, he did offer up a heaping caveat: he will be challenged for the job.
He couched that in the sort of generalizing rhetoric he has a tendency toward whenever discussing positions under duress, however. Specifically, he framed the competition in the sense of every job always being up for competition.
Yet when Ben Roethlisberger was his quarterback, he talked about the front office needing to sharpen their quarterback evaluating sword toward the end of his career as they began to look for his successor. Now he says he’s always keenly interested in evaluating the position.
But let’s get to the point. Tomlin also said, when asked directly, that he believes his 2024 starter is currently on the roster. Mitch Trubisky has not been a starter by intention since the beginning of the 2022 season, so we can safely narrow that down to Pickett and Mason Rudolph.
And the head coach also confirmed that the Steelers very much would like to bring Rudolph back as an unrestricted free agent. So the question is, having confirmed that they want Rudolph back and that Pickett will be challenged for his starting job, are we now safely to assume that it will be Pickett and Rudolph vying for the right to be on the field in 2024?
What to take with a grain of salt and how much salt to take with it is never quite certain when coaches make proclamations at the end of the season. Especially when cornered into giving an answer he has to give. Tomlin couldn’t possibly answer the question about believing his starter is on the roster in any way but the affirmative, after all, could he? Imagine the ripple effect saying no would have had.
