Mike Tomlin sounded a bit like a manager sticking with his starting pitcher Tuesday. The bottom line is that Mason Rudolph begins another week as the starting quarterback for the Steelers, and yet Kenny Pickett could still factor into the equation.
“He’s got the ball to start the week, and we’ll see where Kenny is from a mobility perspective,” Tomlin said from behind the podium at UPMC Rooney Sports Complex.
According to Tomlin, the Steelers are operating much the way they did early last week. Pickett will take some reps with the first-team offense in practice, but Rudolph is “scheduled” to be the guy under center again, which was the million-dollar question coming out of the win against the Bengals.
Had Rudolph struggled, it might be a different story. Pickett had surgery Dec. 4 to speed up the recovery process from a high ankle sprain the previous day, and he was able to hit the practice field last week, too. The Steelers ruled him out Thursday, which worked out well for them and Rudolph, given the way he played against Cincinnati.
“We’ll see where Kenny is. … Obviously, we have a great deal more comfort because of what we saw in stadium,” Tomlin said in a nod to Rudolph, who completed 17 of 27 passes for 190 yards and two touchdowns.
There needs to be a similar comfort in the backups to Elandon Roberts, the starting inside linebacker who will miss this week’s game with the pectoral injury he sustained Saturday. Roberts, of course, was the last starter standing among the trio of Cole Holcomb, Kwon Alexander and himself.
Now the Steelers turn to Mykal Walker, Myles Jack and to a lesser extent Mark Robinson, although Tomlin confirmed that veteran Blake Martinez also would get another chance to suit up after being inactive the past two weeks. He did not rule out Roberts for the rest of the season, which is encouraging.
The prognosis is slightly better at safety, where Tomlin categorized Minkah Fitzpatrick and Trenton Thompson as day-to-day. They’ll likely be limited in Wednesday’s practice but have a chance to work their way back to face the Seahawks. Fitzpatrick missed the Bengals game with a knee injury, and Thompson was out with a neck injury, so 31-year-old Eric Rowe stepped up from the practice squad to start and even picked off a Jake Browning pass amid some struggles in coverage.
“We didn’t have [Rowe and Jack] on practice squad as developing players,” Tomlin said. “We had them on practice squad as capable players. Guys we could call upon to give us varsity-like work and effort, and their play reflected that.”
What he said: “Not thinking about football, I just don’t think that’s in his DNA. He’s a football lover. He might’ve been pushing toward retirement, but probably because of lack of opportunity. It didn't take him long to ponder the opportunity when we reached out to him, for example. He’s a football lover, so I imagine he was waiting for the call.” — Tomlin on how Myles Jack went from retired in mid-November to potentially starting for the Steelers down the stretch barely a month later.
Our take: Jack himself admitted after Saturday’s game that he was playing a lot of video games, sitting on Zoom calls to manage the minor league hockey team he owns with his mom and working toward his pilot’s license when the Steelers gave him a ring. And in this case, Jack is a player whom the Steelers themselves essentially wrote off as an option to help them in 2023, considering they cut him after he labored through injury woes last season.
But hey, when you lose three starting inside linebackers in the span of a couple months — all post-trade deadline, too — desperate times call for desperate measures. It will be a fantastic subplot for the rest of the season if Jack can play at a high level or even a competent level. He looked a step slow at times early against the Bengals, but that’s to be expected in his first action since Week 18 of 2022. It appeared that he got into more of a groove as the game progressed, including a sack, except he was kicking himself for dropping a sure interception. If there are any more injuries to the linebacker corps in Seattle, maybe Devin Bush can sneak home with the Steelers on the team plane.
Up next: The Seahawks are 8-7 and fighting for their own playoff chances, and Tomlin acknowledged that the challenges of preparation are a bit different for an unfamiliar opponent than scheming against an intra-division rival such as the Bengals.
Brian Batko: bbatko@post-gazette.com and Twitter @BrianBatko
First Published: December 26, 2023, 5:20 p.m.
