With the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 2023 season at an end in a bitter loss to the Buffalo Bills in the Wild Card Round, it’s time to look to the future already. There will be plenty to wrap up over the next several months as players come and go, including re-signings, releases, draft picks, perhaps trades, and who knows what else.
We will also inevitably take stock of who had good seasons, who had bad seasons, who improved their position, who hurt theirs. In case you haven’t noticed, the NFL has long turned itself into a 365-day business (366 during leap years), so we’ll always have something to discuss.
Player: QB Mason Rudolph
Stock Value: Even
Reasoning: The veteran quarterback neither substantially helped nor hurt his future with his middling performance in the Steelers’ Wild Card loss to the Buffalo Bills. Note that this specific stock evaluation is based solely on the postseason game and not the season as a whole. That will come at a later date; right now, we’re still wrapping up the week. His season-long stock is obviously up very significantly.
I know that Mason Rudolph is the savior of the moment, and not only that but also the land’s favorite martyr, but let’s be honest: he did alright this year. He proved that he has the talent to play in the NFL, but five-plus years of NFL employment already indicated that.
The sixth-year veteran moved into the starting lineup due to injury (Kenny Pickett) and incompetence (Mitch Trubisky) in Week 16. He helped the Steelers to back-to-back games of 30 or more points and the offense averaged 400-plus yards in those affairs.
Then he played against an actually good defense, even one that was resting starters, and didn’t look as good against the Baltimore Ravens. Of course, it was also a horribly rainy day. Yet he avoided a snowstorm in Buffalo and looked rather pedestrian against the Bills on Monday.
Completing 56 percent of his passes at 22 for 39, Rudolph threw for 229 yards with two touchdown passes and one interception. Most of that output came in the second half, though to his credit, he showed all those dubious “intangible” words like “grit” and “moxie” and the like. He kept the team together and kept it moving and ultimately made it a one-score game before the defense defecated the bed.
No, his defense certainly didn’t help him, nor did WR George Pickens fumbling early in the game, directly leading to the Bills taking an easy 14-0 lead. Then Rudolph threw an interception in the red zone that would have cut it to 14-7, leading to another Bills touchdown that instead made it 21-0.
On the whole, once again, he did okay. Not great. Not awful. It was a thoroughly middling, average performance. And now he is due to become an unrestricted free agent. Will there be any team out there willing to offer him a starting job? Likely not.
And yet despite all of this, as one reader actually suggested recently, no, I don’t hold Mason Rudolph in any kind of contempt. He didn’t kick my dog. I just watch him play quarterback and I don’t see a victim. I see a player with talent who is probably never going to earn a starting job against quality competition. Any team he starts on is going to have either an average or injured quarterback room. Which should make it that much easier for the Steelers to re-sign him.
