RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Carrying four quarterbacks on a 53-man regular season roster is exceptionally rare in the modern NFL. Most of the examples of it happening include paperwork tricks and versatile signal callers like Taysom Hill during his New Orleans Saints days.
For the sake of maintaining depth at every other position, the formula is clear. One starter. One backup. One third stringer who spends most weeks either inactive or dipping down to the practice squad.
The Steelers may be the next exception to the rule as they juggle their present interests in winning with their future interests of finding their next franchise guy.
Required Reading: Steelers preseason opener winners, losers: Debuting QBs shine vs Packers
Even a diminished Aaron Rodgers showed last season that he’s the best available option for GM Omar Khan and coach Mike McCarthy in the here and now. He’s arguably the best pure passer in NFL history, and his knowledge of where the ball needs to go was the boost the Steelers needed to win the AFC North in underdog fashion. Even if the physical ability to get it there isn’t quite what it was in his prime.
Mason Rudolph has likewise identified himself as the proven backup every team that fancies itself a contender needs. Though the Steelers have never seen fit to give him the starting job long term, despite frequent opportunities to do so since he was drafted in 2018, he’s won games when the Steelers needed him to.
In 2023, he rallied together three victories to close the season, salvaging a playoff berth that otherwise might have been a lost season due to injuries and ineffectiveness from Kenny Pickett and Mitch Trubisky. Then last season, he closed out a win that Rodgers couldn’t finish the second half of due to injury. And he kept the Steelers in the subsequent game at Chicago.
Will Howard and Drew Allar haven’t proven that kind of competence yet. Both were lottery ticket-type NFL draft picks the past couple of years. Allar was selected in the third round this past April while Howard got his call in the sixth round in 2025.
Those types get roster churned through all the time in the NFL. They’re not the first-round guys who make or break front office regimes.
And yet, there are good reasons for the Steelers to want to hold onto both, at least long enough to have a proper quarterback competition come this time next year. Especially after both showed out in their respective NFL debuts Aug. 13 against the Green Bay Packers .
Howard is a proven winner with a College Football Playoff national championship under his belt at Ohio State. He’s got size that’s caused many fans to compare him to Ben Roethlisberger at 6-foot-4, 236 pounds. And there’s an edge to his game that’s attractive — the Downingtown, Pa., product famously called out Penn State for not recruiting him to college before taking the Nittany Lions down in Beaver Stadium as a Buckeye. The persistent knock has been his arm strength and ability to make NFL-level throws.
Allar was the opposing quarterback that day and fittingly has the opposite reputation. His arm is probably the best on the team. For a larger guy, he can move like Buffalo Bills star Josh Allen. He has, however, consistently come up short in the big moments. In three years as Penn State’s starter, he failed to beat Big Ten big dogs like Ohio State, Oregon and Michigan over a half dozen opportunities. And his interception in the College Football Playoff semifinal against Notre Dame has been a microcosm of his perceived inability to process defenses and coverages.
Aug. 13 against the Packers, Allar grabbed the headlines by totaling three total touchdowns and averaging nearly 12 yards per attempt. Howard got a little lost in that spotlight but still delivered a touchdown drive in the two-minute drill right before halftime.
“It’s very reflective of Coach McCarthy and his playcalling and his system,” Howard said of the quarterbacks' success after the game. “How it’s tailored to be friendly for the quarterback. I think it also speaks to coach Tom Arth and coach [Brian Angelichio] everybody in that room. And [Rodgers] helping us out.”
How could you not want to see those guys go toe-to-toe for the top job with another year of development under McCarthy, who shepherded Rodgers through many of his best years and got a lot out of Dak Prescott with the Dallas Cowboys?
It’s a collision of circumstances where most NFL franchises would probably choose one direction or the other. Go for broke to give Rodgers a John Elway-type ending with Rudolph in tow? Or turn the reins over to the young guys, for better or for worse?
The Steelers aren’t most NFL franchises. They consider themselves an annual contender. One that’s won six Super Bowls by constantly finding the right balance of present and future.
The mindset is, admittedly, a tad haughty. And one could argue that kind of navel gazing is the reason this franchise has now spent eight seasons in the wilderness without a playoff win despite always being in the playoff mix.
Still, the roles in this quarterback room are distinct enough that it doesn’t feel like the mess you’d normally associate with having four guys. Think Shedeur Sanders, Dillon Gabriel, Kenny Pickett and DeShaun Watson in Cleveland last year.
Perhaps that’s a good enough reason to keep all of them for as long as you can.
A year is a long time to wait, and anything could happen once the games start to count. If the Steelers are good enough to win a playoff game, maybe someone needs to be cut loose to make room for a linebacker or cornerback. If they’re bad, maybe Rodgers calls it a career or early or Rudolph becomes expendable as an unnecessary luxury. Maybe they’ll be so bad that they position themselves to draft a different quarterback early in the pecking order.
In the meantime, you don’t have to squint to see the potential benefits of doing something unorthodox come roster cut-down day in a few weeks.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Dr...
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