Who doesn’t love opinions? We’ve all got them, among other things, and there are few things we are more eager to share. Especially when it comes to fans and analysts about their sports takes, some of them hotter than others.
There have been some flaming takes over the past month or so surrounding the Pittsburgh Steelers, the quarterback position being no exception. Truth be told, there’s an interesting dynamic right now with a first-round starter serving as a healthy No. 2 this week behind their third-string quarterback—but not without reason.
Mason Rudolph has had the opportunity to start the past two games due to starter Kenny Pickett’s ankle injury and backup Mitch Trubisky’s crapitude, and he has made the most of it. It’s widely agreed that he has delivered overall the best quarterback play the team has seen for the past two years. What’s less universally agreed upon what that means for the future.
Pro Football Focus’ Steve Palazzolo remains skeptical about what he’s seen from Rudolph over the past two games, even while acknowledging that PFF has him graded better than the Cleveland Browns’ Joe Flacco right now. While he doesn’t dispute how Rudolph has been playing, he struggles to extrapolate from that what his future play will look like. Including whether he can get a shot to start over Pickett next year.
“I don’t think anything” could make that happen, he said on 93.7 The Fan yesterday with Andrew Fillipponi and Chris Mueller. “I mean, a Super Bowl run. But even then, I would still be skeptical. Just because Nick Foles won a Super Bowl in 2017, that did not project future greatness for him. He went on a two-game run where, the baseline of previous performance, that was far stronger than the two-game run. If Rudolph goes on a six-game run, I don’t know that that’s enough”.
Foles, a former third-round draft pick, was a former starter for the Philadelphia Eagles. He was benched in the middle of his third season in 2014, eventually returning to the team years later. In 2018, he took over late in the season after Carson Wentz suffered a season-ending injury. In the Super Bowl win over the New England Patriots and Tom Brady, he threw for 373 yards with three touchdowns to one interception along with a receiving touchdown. He quickly faded into irrelevance soon after.
As for Rudolph, he was a third-string quarterback just a few weeks ago with only a relatively small segment of the Steelers fan base even acknowledging his existence. He did not receive any meaningful attention in free agency this past March in spite of reports that he was eager to find another team after being relegated to the third team in 2022.
A 2018 third-round pick, the bulk of Rudolph’s in-game playing experience came in 2019 after Ben Roethlisberger suffered a season-ending elbow injury. He went 5-3 as a starter, going 176-for-283 passing for 1,765 yards, 13 touchdowns, and 9 interceptions but his numbers were trending in the wrong direction.
Following his concussion that season, in the game leading up to his benching, he went 99-for-169 for 990 yards with five touchdowns to seven interceptions, averaging under six yards per pass attempt, with three fumbles. He went 0-1-1 in a couple of spot starts in the intervening years until finally getting back on the field in the past weeks.
While praise has been effusive for his efforts in those games, Palazzolo has been more measured, noting of his 86-yard touchdown to WR George Pickens that he didn’t do “anything special to create that”. He noted that much of the credit belonged to the receivers making plays, particularly in his first start.
“But last week I thought he was awesome throwing the ball down the field and giving Pickens those opportunities to make those plays”, Palazzolo said. “And again, it’s not like Pickett never did that. He had games where he did that. Even Trubisky had games where he was solid, last year, not this year. So it’s like, what do you do with any two-game sample? You don’t do a whole lot”.
For full disclosure, I do have to agree with that. For the record, I am neither a fan nor a detractor of either Pickett or Rudolph, but I have been trying to communicate that two games are a small sample size. I choose to be optimistic and hope that he will look great against the Ravens, but will he?
