The Steelers are now back at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex, facing down a long regular season that looks a lot more promising given how things have gone leading up to it. Finishing just above .500 last year, they anticipate being able to compete with any team in the league this season with second-year QB Kenny Pickett leading the way.
They’ve done a great deal to address what they identified as their shortcomings during the offseason, which included addressing the offensive and defensive lines as well as the secondary and the inside linebacker room, which is nearly entirely different from last year. The results have been positive so far.
Even well into the regular season and beyond, there are going to be plenty of questions that need answered. When will the core rookies get to play, or even start? Is the depth sufficient where they upgraded? Can they stand toe-to-toe with the Bengals and the other top teams in the league? We’ll try to frame the conversation in relevant ways as long as you stick with us throughout the season, as we have for many years.
Question: Is the offensive success with Mason Rudolph at quarterback an indictment of Kenny Pickett?
Okay, look. I already know the resounding response to this question will be “Yes”. Clearly Mason Rudolph is the third-greatest quarterback in team history behind Terry Bradshaw and Ben Roethlisberger, with a better tree house to boot.
But let’s just step back for a moment and think about this. Outside of the godawful quarterbacking by Mitch Trubisky, the offensive turnaround began after Matt Canada was fired. They struggled to score in the first game, but Kenny Pickett played quite well, and frankly, he had a touchdown pass to Diontae Johnson that didn’t count, lest we forget. That’s not his fault.
Unfortunately, he only managed to play fewer than six full quarters in the post-Canada offense. And frankly, the run game wasn’t humming like this too much at first. The offense very obviously leaned on Jaylen Warren and Najee Harris yesterday and it wasn’t because of how amazingly Rudolph handed off the ball.
At this rate, it doesn’t seem as though we’re going to see Pickett on the field again this season, even if they make the playoffs. That will be quite a long time for him to stew, waiting for the opportunity to answer the questions surrounding him.
Of course, if he’d played better through the first three months of the season there wouldn’t be so many questions. And there wouldn’t even be a conversation about him not returning to the starting lineup when healthy, let alone a seemingly firm decision against him without a conversation.
Everybody agrees that Pickett was not surrounded with the ideal setting to succeed. Canada was the highlight of that, but there were many other issues, and there still are. Odds are he will be back starting in 2024, at least in the beginning of the year. But the last two games are making that less guaranteed.
