A Very Un-Steelers-Like QB Controversy: Pickett or Rudolph?

For the first time in decades, the Pittsburgh Steelers find themselves at a crossroads. Kenny Pickett, 20th pick in the 2022 draft and unchallenged heir to Ben Roethlisberger, will soon return from ankle surgery; he’s currently healthy enough to take practice reps. But Pickett has thrown fewer touchdown passes (6) than Tommy DeVito (8), Jake Browning (9) and Joe Flacco (10), despite making twice as many starts as any of them. The Steelers offense has been feeble under Pickett, especially early in games: the team averaged just 7.1 first-half points per game — defensive touchdowns included — with Pickett and backup Mitch Trubisky at the helm.

Enter Mason Rudolph, the third-stringer who has been with the organization so long he once threw a touchdown pass to John Stallworth. (Not really. But do you remember Vance McDonald?) Rudolph was not spectacular in a 31–11 Week 16 blowout of the Cincinnati Bengals, but he did the one simple thing Pickett and Trubisky appeared unwilling/unable to do: He got the ball downfield to top receiver George Pickens. With Rudolph taking snaps, the Steelers offense looked explosive and playoff-worthy for the first time since the preseason.

The Steelers still have a 9.9% chance of reaching the playoffs, per the DVOA analysis at FTN Network, as they prepare for the Seattle Seahawks. Mike Tomlin, who already replaced embattled offensive coordinator Matt Canada with assistants Eddie Faulkner and Mike Sullivan, is in no position to play politics or base his quarterback decision on the future. He must select the quarterback who gives him the best chance to win on Sunday, and if the Steelers do win, he must make the same decision in Week 18, and then in the playoffs. 

If Tomlin chooses Rudolph, he’s not just admitting that the team’s hand-picked quarterback of the future is still not ready to win important games after almost two full seasons. He’s also admitting that the better choice has been on his roster for five years, yet he was incapable of recognizing it.

But if Tomlin returns to Pickett at any time in this regular or postseason, and Pickett performs as unimpressively as he has for pretty much all of his NFL career, the coach risks losing a playoff berth in an effort to prove he was right. Even Tomlin, who has the job security of a Supreme Court justice, can’t afford to do that without consequences.

A quarterback controversy? A head coach in peril? Are we sure we are talking about the Steelers?

Tomlin would not be Tomlin without a plan to mitigate situations like this. As of midweek, Rudolph remained the Steelers’ starter for Sunday, while Pickett (“limited” on Wednesday’s practice report) received increased practice time.  

“Obviously we have a great deal more comfort because of what we've seen in-stadium for Mason Rudolph and that helps us, but we still really are in the same posture,” Tomlin said early in the week, per ESPN’s Brooke Pryor. “[Rudolph’s] got the ball to start the week, and we'll see where Kenny is from a mobility perspective and then kind of go from there, and playing day by day based on the things that we see from that perspective."

You know a coach (or anyone) is giving you the runaround when they say “perspective” twice in the same sentence. But Tomlin is playing the proper message-control card. Pickett remains the starter when healthy. It’s just that “healthy” takes on a different meaning when the third option suddenly looks better than the first. (You had better believe that Roethlisberger, even in his dotage, would have gotten the Week 17 start under the same circumstances.)

So Tomlin bought a week. But if Rudolph wins, we’ll be back in the same place before Week 18 at the Ravens. We’re in the posture where Pickett’s mobility is still day-by-day from a perspective perspective perspective, Tomlin will say, fooling a dwindling percentage of his audience.

Pickett, for his part, is not making things easier for Tomlin. When local television reporter Ashley Kaiser asked Pickett whether he has learned anything by watching from the sidelines, he responded with a terse “No.”

Tomlin can’t expect Pickett to play along and provide humble, reassuring soundbytes as his franchise-quarterback status comes under increasing jeopardy.

There is no escaping some hard offseason questions at this point. Should the Steelers draft or sign a replacement or challenger for Pickett? Will Tomlin search outside the organization for a permanent replacement for Canada? And what justification could Tomlin possibly offer if the answers to those questions are “no” and “no?”

Tomlin and the Steelers took the hard-sell approach to Pickett as a franchise quarterback after an inconclusive rookie season in which he averaged just 184.2 passing yards per game and scattered seven touchdown passes across 12 starts. Tomlin and Canada praised Pickett’s leadership, as did newcomer Allen Robinson and others. Tomlin even named Pickett the Steelers’ lone team captain for the 2023 season, a decision that was so unusual that it was almost suspicious. 

The message was clear: ignore the stats, Pickett is a winner. The Western Pennsylvania media and fans, enamored of the former University of Pittsburgh standout and suckers for workingman’s-hero narratives served with a sprinkle of coal suet, lapped it all up in both the offseason and a preseason (when the Steelers looked like the 2007 Patriots). But the message lost its magic when Tomlin began insisting that he was satisfied with last-second comebacks to win low-scoring games against opponents like the Titans.

A franchise quarterback cannot be created by decree. The player must earn it. When he does not — and Pickett, categorically, has not — the excuse circuit-breakers start tripping. The offensive coordinator charged with nurturing him? Already gone. The supporting cast? Pickens and the others, criticized for their effort when Pickett was orchestrating long strings of three-and-outs, no longer looked like the problem when Rudolph began getting them the ball. The next switch that traditionally gets flipped is the head coach, unless he proactively unplugs the quarterback first.

Tomlin may believe he is above such problems. He inherited Roethlisberger from Bill Cowher way back in 2007. Tomlin and Roethlisberger won one Super Bowl and reached a second one together. They remained a perennial playoff team until Roethlisberger could barely stumble back and lift his arm to pass. The Steelers posted a winning record with Pickett and Trubisky last year. They remain in the playoff chase now. And there have been more Roman Catholic popes (five) than Steelers coaches (three) in the last 50 years. 

The Steelers are the Sultans of Stability and Kings of Continuity. Plate tectonics make more hasty decisions than they do. Tomlin may believe he has another year to tinker with Pickett, maybe two. Heck, while the rest of us are speculating about Tomlin’s job status, the Steelers are reportedly planning an extension. 

Continuity without accountability becomes stagnation. “Because Tomlin said so” is not an adequate justification for the selection of a starting quarterback. “Because that’s how the Steelers do business” also ends up being a weak reason to give a head coach another chance to prove that he can do more than tread water at .500. Especially if that coach’s plan, now that he has reached the crossroads, is to keep driving straight.

There are no easy answers here; hence the “crossroads” metaphor/cliché. Starting over at quarterback is easier to write about than to do. Coaches of Tomlin’s stature don’t often handle having a Frank Reich or Eric Bienemy grafted into their structure as offensive prime ministers very well. Franchises like the Jets and Browns face these problems every three years or so and never solve them. It’s a credit to Tomlin and the Steelers organization that they face them roughly once per quarter-century.

Still, Tomlin and the Steelers must do something. Otherwise, the next two weeks will be remembered as the beginning of a very bitter end.