For the fourth season in a row, Mike Tomlin’s Steelers have a shiny new starting quarterback room, with no obvious up-and-comer waiting in the wings. Although they drafted Will Howard, he isn’t likely trending toward a Hall-of-Fame career. After a swing and a miss on Kenny Pickett, they have tried veterans. This year, it’s Aaron Rodgers, arguably the most talented quarterback ever to put on a Steelers jersey.
Making such a huge change at the most important position in football is not something anyone wants to do on an annual basis. Almost invariably, that’s the world in which Tomlin has lived with the Steelers since Ben Roethlisberger retired. Although Pickett was with the team in 2022 and started most of the season, he was a new starter to enter a season in 2023. Last year, they had Russell Wilson (and Justin Fields). Before Pickett, they tried Mitch Trubisky as a bridge option. What does this all mean as part of the bigger picture of the struggles of putting a team together?
“I don’t know that I’ve wasted any time looking at it from that perspective”, Tomlin said, via the Steelers’ website, about the carousel of quarterbacks in the wake of Roethlisberger’s retirement. “There are challenges that come with my role each and every year, and I get hyper focused on those challenges, and I don’t know that I compare it to a larger discussion, if you will”.
Tomlin talked about concrete things like leaning on Rodgers’ experience and nurturing Howard from a leadership standpoint. “I’m more focused on those things than I am the larger discussion that has been four, five years of it. I hadn’t looked at it through that lens”, he said.
Of course, Tomlin and the Steelers hope to get off the quarterback carousel in 2026. Although they won’t outright say it, the assumption is that they will target a quarterback in the first round of next year’s draft. Already, the scouts are working on getting eyes on the top prospects first-hand.
Make no mistake, they are not in this situation because they desire to be. Under ideal circumstances, a team would carry the same roster every year, winning every game. As you might have noticed over the course of your existence, though, we don’t live in an ideal world. Aaron Rodgers said he wishes he had Mike Tomlin as his coach with the Steelers 15 years ago, and perhaps the feeling is mutual.
But Tomlin and the Steelers aren’t getting the Aaron Rodgers of 15 years ago. They didn’t see the best of Russell Wilson last year, either, though they may have seen Justin Fields’ best. At the end of the day, you can only move forward and work with what’s available. Nobody moves from quarterback to quarterback by design. But in each case, the Steelers pursued what they perceived as their best option. Obviously, they thought Pickett could be their long-term answer. Since then, they’ve hardly gotten the bat off their shoulder for another swing.
