2024 Offseason Side Questions: Will Mason Rudolph Be Kenny Pickett’s Competition For Starting Job?

The Steelers’ 2023 season has been put out of its distress, ending as so many have earlier than in recent times: a disappointing, blowout playoff loss. The one change-up currently is after they miss the playoffs altogether. However with the Buffalo Payments stamping them out within the Wildcard Spherical, they’ve one other lengthy offseason to sit up for.

The largest query hanging over the group as we converse is the way forward for head coach Mike Tomlin. Whereas a firing appears unlikely, hypothesis has been rampant about his persevering with. When requested about his contract standing after the loss to the Payments, he walked away mid-question.

Past that, there may be…the quarterback query. Is Kenny Pickett the man? Will he get one other season’s reprieve and not using a problem? How will the group tackle the depth chart? Do they re-sign Mason Rudolph, one among few vital unrestricted free brokers?

The Steelers are swirling with extra questions this offseason than common, frankly, although the foremost free agent listing is much less substantial than common. It’s only a matter of…what occurs subsequent? The place do they go from right here? How do they discover the way in which ahead?

Query: Will Mason Rudolph be Kenny Pickett’s competitors for the beginning quarterback job?

Whereas head coach Mike Tomlin did acknowledge Kenny Pickett as his starter transferring into the 2024 season throughout his post-season press convention yesterday, he did supply up a heaping caveat: he can be challenged for the job.

He couched that within the type of generalizing rhetoric he tends towards each time discussing positions underneath duress, nonetheless. Particularly, he framed the competitors within the sense of each job all the time being up for competitors.

But when Ben Roethlisberger was his quarterback, he talked in regards to the entrance workplace needing to sharpen their quarterback evaluating sword towards the top of his profession as they started to search for his successor. Now he says he’s all the time keenly curious about evaluating the place.

However let’s get to the purpose. Tomlin additionally stated, when requested instantly, that he believes his 2024 starter is at the moment on the roster. Mitch Trubisky has not been a starter by intention for the reason that starting of the 2022 season, so we will safely slim that right down to Pickett and Mason Rudolph.

And the pinnacle coach additionally confirmed that the Steelers very a lot want to deliver Rudolph again as an unrestricted free agent. So the query is, having confirmed that they need Rudolph again and that Pickett can be challenged for his beginning job, are we now safely to imagine that it will likely be Pickett and Rudolph vying for the fitting to be on the sector in 2024?

What to take with a grain of salt and the way a lot salt to take with it’s by no means fairly sure when coaches make proclamations on the finish of the season. Particularly when cornered into giving a solution he has to present. Tomlin couldn’t probably reply the query about believing his starter is on the roster in any manner however the affirmative, in spite of everything, might he? Think about the ripple impact saying no would have had.