The Pittsburgh Steelers are going to have a completely new quarterback room again in 2025. Well, sort of. The room won’t have any quarterbacks from 2024, but the Steelers did bring back an old friend in Mason Rudolph.
Rudolph, a third-round pick of the Steelers in 2018, was with the team through the 2023 season. Throughout his time in Pittsburgh, Rudolph played in 21 games with 13 starts. He completed 63.5 percent of his passes for 3,085 yards, 19 touchdowns, and 11 interceptions. But his final game with the Steelers was a playoff loss to the Buffalo Bills, where Rudolph only completed 56.4 percent of his passes for 229 yards, two touchdowns, and one interception.
Rudolph and the Steelers separated that offseason. Rudolph signed with the Tennessee Titans, and the Steelers brought in Russell Wilson and Justin Fields. Now, both Wilson and Fields are gone while Rudolph is back in Pittsburgh. And Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin says he’s confident in Rudolph as the team’s potential starter in 2025. But if he’s confident in 2025, why did he and the Steelers let Rudolph walk in free agency just one offseason ago?
“If he was what you thought he was, why did you let him go in the first place?” Shannon Sharpe said Monday on ESPN’s First Take. “I look at the situation like this: Once you move on, what are you bringing him back for? If he was what you thought he was, you would have never let him go. At that position? You’ve got the quarterback that you believe that can get you to where you want to go, and you let him go. Come on, Mike Tomlin, that’s not sharp at all. Nobody believing that.”
As always, it takes two to tango in contract talks. This isn’t just about the Steelers offering Mason Rudolph a bunch of money. According to Mark Kaboly, Rudolph didn’t want to come back to Pittsburgh after it signed Wilson.
After all, Rudolph never had a stable relationship with the Steelers. His career-high in both starts and appearances came back in 2019, when he appeared in 10 games and started eight. He never started more than one game in a season for the Steelers after that until 2023. That’s when Tomlin called on Rudolph to start the final three games of the season, and he helped lead the team to a three-game winning streak. He completed 74.3 percent of his passes for 719 yards and three touchdowns without throwing a pick in those three starts.
Despite all the struggles at quarterback in the final years of Ben Roethlisberger’s career and trying to find a replacement, the Steelers never turned to Mason Rudolph to find out if he was the answer. That’s why Sharpe is so critical of Mike Tomlin saying he’s confident in Rudolph in 2025. Maybe Rudolph can start and be successful in Pittsburgh in 2025. But Tomlin’s never trusted him beyond a few games before.
