The Steelers are carrying Skylar Thompson on their 53-man roster into the season as their third quarterback, but is he good enough? Although most teams place less value on the third quarterback—even carrying him on the practice—squad Pittsburgh has always prioritized a three-man depth chart. The Steelers planned for rookie Will Howard as that third quarterback this season, but an injury derailed those plans.
At least, they opted to allow Howard’s finger injury to derail them. Having missed the entire preseason and only beginning to throw now, it’s not unreasonable. For a rookie late-round quarterback, missing that time is huge. And on the flipside, Thompson made the most of his opportunities. But are we fooling ourselves, making him into something more?
Beat writer Mark Kaboly has been an outspoken critic of the Steelers’ decision to place Will Howard on the Reserve/Injured List. “You have to believe that this is all because of the shortsightedness of a handful of quarters by Skylar Thompson that led to this decision”, he wrote recently.
Skylar Thompson was one of the NFL’s best quarterbacks of the preseason. He went 41-of-56 passing for 498 yards with 4 touchdowns to 1 interception. This is not the best preseason he has had either. As a rookie, he went 36-of-48 for 450 yards and 5 touchdowns to 0 interceptions.
In between, however, and in actual regular-season games, he hasn’t quite played as well. Still, he is in a new system now, and perhaps what the Steelers are asking him to do better complements his natural tendencies. Likely in light of this, Kaboly anticipated Thompson would not make the team, but, of course, he was wrong.
“Thompson took that spot after having two good preseason games, mostly against guys who aren’t in the NFL anymore”, Kaboly bemoaned. Although he insisted he wasn’t knocking him, he wrote, “Thompson isn’t going to help this team win any games this year, next year, or five years from now. Howard might not either, but I’d like to put him in a position to do so more than Thompson”.
Although Kaboly has a case, the reality is we don’t know what the Steelers’ plans are. We do know they passed on an opportunity to immediately designate Will Howard as a return candidate. In avoiding doing so, they caused themselves inconvenience, which implies that the option to keep him on IR all year was an important consideration. What we do know, though, is that there are much worse third quarterbacks in the NFL than Skylar Thompson.
On the other hand, what we don’t know is how Howard’s inability to practice right now will stunt his growth. By all accounts, he had a good offseason leading up to his injury. He would have played a ton of snaps in the preseason, but the fact that he didn’t is not the Steelers’ fault. And Thompson seized the opportunity and played his way onto the roster. He might not be the next Steelers franchise quarterback—but Howard probably isn’t, either.
