With the question of head coach Mike Tomlin’s status for the 2024 season informally settled, two glaring questions remain. The more immediately solved is who the Pittsburgh Steelers’ next offensive coordinator will be. The less immediate is who their next quarterback will be. And they can start by figuring out which quarterbacks will be on the roster.
The one we know with certainty, and the one who seems most likely to be given the opportunity, is Kenny Pickett, the two-year veteran who lost his starting role late in the 2023 season due to injury. The one fans want back is the man who replaced him, Mason Rudolph.
But he’s a free agent, and many insist that he secretly hates the team for all the wrongs inflicted upon him. He was expecting to be gone in 2022, and perhaps he would have, if any other team had offered him a contract. The market will be different this time around after getting the chance to play, but will he be back in Pittsburgh anyway?
“Yeah, I’m expecting that, to be honest”, RB Jaylen Warren told reporters yesterday, via the team’s website. “He went out there, did his thing, as we all saw. Very competitive, and he put the ball in the right places when they needed to be”.
Once again, I want to give the full context in this instance by including the two-part question he was asked. “What did you see out of Mason the last four weeks?” was posed to him. “Do you hope that he’s a guy that comes back, maybe competes for the starting job?”.
I don’t feel confident enough to extrapolate from Warren’s somewhat jumbled response that he was specifically saying he expected Rudolph to be in competition for the starting job. Perhaps he did, but I don’t want to go out on that limb and put those words in his mouth. But I think at least it’s clear that he is anticipating seeing Rudolph in the locker room in 2024. Not that he necessarily knows much more than we do. It’s up to Rudolph and his agent and Omar Khan and Mike Tomlin and Art Rooney II.
A six-year veteran, Rudolph started the final three games of the 2023 season and led the team to three much-needed wins. He went 55-for-74 passing for 719 yards with three touchdown passes to zero interceptions, averaging 9.7 yards per attempt with a 118 quarterback rating.
It was enough to earn the starting spot in the playoffs over Pickett, the Steelers coming up short, 31-17, after digging a 21-0 hole. Rudolph finished the game 22-for-39 passing for 229 yards with touchdown passes to Diontae Johnson and Calvin Austin III, with one interception in the end zone, which proved a pivotal moment in the game.
That he played reasonably well, and certainly better than the other quarterbacks on the roster, is not in dispute. It’s less clear how the 31 other teams in the NFL will view him as a prospect, what kind of salary and security they would be willing to offer him, and how many of them would view him as even a potential starter, let alone one they would hand the keys to without a competition. But many agree that he earned the right to compete, even if not here, including former teammate Ben Roethlisberger.
At least as we sit here today, I anticipate that Warren will be correct and that we will see Rudolph back in Pittsburgh for his seventh NFL season. Whether he’ll be in an open competition for the starting job, I have no idea. However it plays out, I wish him the best, provided that his best doesn’t come against the Steelers.
