The 2024 plan for the Pittsburgh Steelers when it comes to their quarterback situation became a little bit clearer these last few days thanks to a few interviews that team president Art Rooney II conducted with local television stations.
Well, sort of.
Rooney, in so many words, said this past week that the team isn’t very likely to be part of a trade that involves a quarterback and with that, perhaps we will see fan and analyst discussions about QB Justin Fields being acquired from the Chicago Bears come to an end. I wrote a few months ago why a trade for Fields was very unlikely to happen so what Rooney said in his interview with Andrew Stockey of WTAE-TV isn’t very surprising.
Moving on from the quarterback trade possibility aspect, Rooney being non-committal to veteran QB Mitch Trubisky over a week ago sure makes it seem like the team will be parting ways with him by the middle of March when he is due a $1 million roster bonus. Trubisky, by the way, is also due a base salary of $4.25 million in 2024, and even if he survives his roster bonus date, there’s no way he will earn that Paragraph 5 amount as a third-string quarterback in Pittsburgh.
Assuming Trubisky will be jettisoned out of the quarterback room, that would leave QB Kenny Pickett as the only one at that position to add to in the coming weeks and months. The Steelers normally like to carry four quarterbacks on their roster by the start of training camp, and on Wednesday Rooney indicated that would likely be the path again for this offseason.
“We’ll have some more faces in that room and go to camp with four quarterbacks as we always do.” Rooney told Jenna Harner of WPXI-TV. “And it’s a little early to kind of speculate too much on where that’s gonna go.”
As has been the message since the Steelers’ 2023 season ended, the team will likely make every effort to re-sign veteran QB Mason Rudolph this offseason and possibly by sometime in March. Rooney once again mentioned Rudolph, who is set to become an unrestricted free agent in March, during his recent sit-down with Harner.
“Bringing Mason back would be great, and we’ve had some conversations, and we’ll see where that goes,” Rooney said.
While it is dangerous to do at this point, let’s assume that the Steelers ultimately re-sign Rudolph this offseason. That would half fill the quarterback room at that point. Where would the other two additions to the group come from? One of those two might be a rookie quarterback, either a late-round draft pick or an undrafted free agent type.
The other addition to the quarterback room might come via free agency and on the cheap at that. There will be several free agent quarterbacks with at least some playing experience looking for work this offseason, and most of them will likely be willing to sign for the minimum.
The middle of March is probably the next important stretch of dates on the offseason calendar when it comes to the Steelers as that is when we should get clarity on the immediate futures of both Rudolph and Trubisky. However the situation with those two veteran quarterbacks plays out, the next six weeks will give us even more of an idea as to how the position group is likely to shake out the remainder of the offseason.
In closing, expect the Steelers to have four quarterbacks under contract come the start of training camp. One of those four quarterbacks will be Pickett and there’s a decent chance Rudolph will be another one of the four.
