The Pittsburgh Steelers have a quarterback controversy on their hands. They just dressed their first-round pick as the backup to the player who entered the season as their third-string quarterback. And that third-stringer, Mason Rudolph, has now led the team to three consecutive victories and given it a chance to make it to the playoffs.
While his 3-0 record as a starter is significant, so are his numbers. He finishes the regular season 55-of-74 passing for 719 yards with three touchdowns to zero interceptions and a quarterback rating north of 118. A small sample size, admittedly, but effective quarterback play.
While Kenny Pickett went 7-3 this year when he was able to start and play the majority of the game, his numbers are thoroughly unremarkable. He went 201-of-324 passing for 2,070 yards with just six touchdown passes. His saving grace is his mere four interceptions, plus his three game-winning drives and fourth-quarter comebacks. But which of the two looks like the better quarterback? It’s no contest for Chris Hoke.
“The reality is this. It’s not even close”, he said on the KDKA Nightly Sports Call show after the Steelers beat the Baltimore with Bob Pompeani. “Mason Rudolph is better than Kenny Pickett. He opens up this offense. The team believes now that they can score points, which permeates throughout the whole team. To me, I don’t know how you can argue either way because this team was a different team the last three weeks”.
For one thing, they were 7-7 three weeks ago after losing three straight games. Mitch Trubisky had been chiefly responsible for authoring that affair, but it’s not as though the offense was much more prolific in the preceding 11 games, albeit less turnover prone.
“A month ago, this team was upside down. There was talk of get rid of Mike Tomlin! Trade George Pickens! Everybody was upset, and George Pickens had been disgruntled for a large part of the season”, Hoke said. He pointed out how Pickens seemed much more engaged yesterday despite having zero targets though he was also coming off two of the best games of his career.
“He gets zero targets and he’s in there celebrating in the locker room, excited because he knows what is coming his way if they get into the playoffs”, Hoke said. “This is what happens when you have a quarterback who can throw a ball and sit in the pocket and deliver it to everybody”.
I don’t know that anybody who has watched the entire season could reasonably argue against the fact that Rudolph has looked like a better quarterback than Pickett. Granted, it’s a smaller sample size under largely different circumstances, including, significantly, a different play caller. The run game on the whole was stronger as was the offensive line.
But isolating the quarterback play, Rudolph was more accurate, more poised, more daring yet not more reckless. He clearly showed a stronger capability of processing the field quickly and making decisions. Pickett has a critical offseason ahead of him if he wants to remain the starting quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers because I don’t know that he keeps the job if he doesn’t prove it first.
