Former Pittsburgh Steelers QB Duck Hodges may not have had a long NFL career, but he had a memorable one. In Pittsburgh’s injury-riddled 2019 season at quarterback, Hodges went from being a rookie minicamp signee to starting NFL quarterback, playing in eight games with six starts for the Steelers and going a respectable 3-3 in those starts. Hodges was a guest on Ben Roethlisberger’s Footbahlin podcast, and he told a story about meeting Randy Fichtner a week after he attended the New York Giants’ minicamp and got an up-close look at then-rookie first-round pick Daniel Jones.
“Ended up getting a tryout to go to Pittsburgh. The week before I went to a tryout for the Giants. I went there knowing they probably weren’t going to sign me because they drafted Daniel Jones that year, I just wanted some experience of what a rookie minicamp looks like before I went to Pittsburgh. I’ll never forget when I got to Randy’s [Fichtner] office, when I got to Pittsburgh, he was like ‘Tell me about the Giants, tell me about Daniel Jones,'” Hodges said.
Hodges said he told Fichtner that he didn’t think Jones was that much better than him.
“I just remember looking at Randy, like straight faced, and Daniel’s a friend of mine, I wasn’t knocking him, but Randy was like ‘Tell me about Daniel Jones,’ I said, ‘I don’t think he’s $30 million better than I am.’ And I think right there, I think that’s when Randy knew, we might have to keep this guy.”
It’s a confident answer for someone who was fighting for an NFL roster spot and going through the minicamp process to compare himself to the sixth overall pick in the draft, but Hodges backed it up with a strong performance in minicamp and landed a roster spot. While Jones did lead the Giants to the playoffs in 2022, he never lived up to the billing of a first-round pick and both he and Hodges won three games as starters in 2019, with Jones starting 12.
While Hodges’ 2019 performance will be remembered by Steelers fans, it was the extent of his NFL career. He spent time on Pittsburgh’s practice squad in 2020 and signed a Reserve/Futures deal with the Rams in 2021 but didn’t make the team, and he’s now retired from the NFL. Jones is a free agent this offseason and will find another opportunity after being released by the Giants during the 2024 season and joining the Vikings’ practice squad, but obviously the one-to-one comparison isn’t fair to either of them.
But showing up to minicamp as an undrafted rookie fighting for an offseason roster spot even after the undrafted free agent process and having the confidence that Duck Hodges did is impressive, and it probably impressed Fichtner and put him further on Pittsburgh’s radar as he went through minicamp. Hodges wasn’t putting Jones down; he was just confident in himself, and that confidence paid off and led to a short but fulfilling stint in the league.
