Kovacevic: Stop tiptoeing, already, when it comes to embracing Rudolph's extraordinary instant impact taken in Seattle (DK's Grind)

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Mason Rudolph heads into the Lumen Field visitors' tunnel after the victory Sunday in Seattle.

DK's Grind

Kovacevic: Stop tiptoeing, already, when it comes to embracing Rudolph's extraordinary instant impact

By Dejan Kovacevic

Jan 1, 2024 • 8:05 am

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SEATTLE -- What's so hard about simply saying it?

Here, look ... take a deep breath, dispose of any and all pointless preconceptions that might've taken root half a decade ago, and attempt to speak this sentence along with me: Mason Rudolph's the starting quarterback of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Yeah? Survive it on the first try?

If not, I'll augment with a visual aid:

OK, how about now?

See, it's not just that Rudolph was about to be buried in a sea of blue up there. Nor that Bobby Wagner, one of the game's most beastly middle linebackers, would be the headliner on a delayed blitz. Nor that George Pickens, the primary target on this planned third-and-7 throw, was in an all-out sprint away from Rudolph and angling toward the right sideline.

Nor, even, that Pickens committed this act of aerial awesomeness at the end:

No, what counted more than anything, at least from my press box perspective, all through the Steelers' 30-23 survival over the Seahawks on this Sunday evening at Lumen Field, was that these players, these coaches and everyone involved on the inside ... they all trusted Rudolph to take shots like this, regardless of the score, regardless of the setting, regardless of the season's precarious status.

They'd do it again and again here, with the most striking example coming at, of all times, on the first snap of the final possession, this after foiling a Seattle onside kick:

Mm-hm. That happened. Saw it through the sides of my fists while rubbing my eyes.

My friends, that's how a team behaves when it's believing in a No. 1 quarterback.

____________________

And to be clear, Rudolph's not a No. 1 at the moment because he's been better than Kenny Pickett. Or Mitch Trubisky, for crying out loud. But rather, it's because Rudolph's two starts have seen this offense, previously among the most pathetic in our city's history, rack up 64 total points, 865 total yards and six total touchdowns in two of the team's most thorough victories in recent memory.

Rudolph's individual passing in these two games:

• Completions/attempts: 35/51
• Yards: 564
• Touchdowns: 2
• Interceptions: 0
• Sacks: 2
• Passer rating: 118.4

In this one alone, he'd go 18 of 24 for 274 yards and a 112.2 rating.

And yet ...

"I thought he did a nice job," came the entire response from Mike Tomlin when asked how Rudolph carried himself here.

Nice job. Consecutive weeks of the very best quarterbacking anywhere in the league.

"We'll talk about that next week," came the Tomlin response when asked if Rudolph would start again next Saturday in the must-win regular-season finale in Baltimore. "Right now, we're just appreciative of the victory, and we'll give you guys something to buzz about here for the next 24 hours or so."

Buzz who what? Reporters? For real?

And why, Tomlin was further pressed, was Pickett made inactive for this game rather than suiting up as a backup?

"Just the early portions of the week, we didn't know what his availability might be," came that reply. "We allocated reps accordingly and, so, we'll see what next week holds."

Allocated who what? We'll see about next week? Seriously? 

And did anyone hear anything in there about Pickett being hurt, a matter on which Tomlin now seems to be vacillating every other hour, most recently suggesting to the team's official website over the weekend that Pickett's health wasn't the dominant factor in his decision this week?

Tomlin's been tying himself into a pretzel on this topic, and it's unclear to me as to why:

Is it that he was a grand contributor to Rudolph going ignored all these years while management, including Tomlin, invested millions into Trubisky, followed by a first-round draft pick into Pickett?

Is it that he wouldn't want to be so way-out-there wrong about Pickett, a kid who literally grew up in their own back yard on the South Side?

Is it that he'd worry about Pickett's feelings or ego or just his basic ability to recover from a benching?

Honestly, I find that last one to be the most plausible while at the same time the most laughable. Because, I can state with conviction -- without opinion, to take it further -- that Pickett's 25 NFL games have seen him rate as one of the league's 5-10 worst quarterbacks across all categories except interceptions. And even that last one could be construed an indictment because of the excessive caution flags in which his coaches have coated him.

Who's being protected? And why?

Moreover, why would anyone in this broader environment feel, as appears to be the case almost universally, that they've got to take Tomlin's same tip-toeing tone when it comes to Rudolph?

Small, harmless example: Najee Harris, when I initially asked after this game if the offense had finally found its identity these past two weeks, replied, "Yeah, man, it feels good. It shows the progression we have, the grit that we have, the resiliency, it just shows us a lot about the offense. We've had a lot of distractions this year, and for Coach Sully and Coach Faulk just to have a good game plan and execute it, and the O-line coming through, I just think it shows what type of team that we are.”

Now, every point Harris cited is both fair and excellent: He and Jaylen Warren combined for a seismic 197 yards on the ground, much of it gutty. Matt Canada was, in addition to being a terrible coordinator, a titanic distraction. Mike Sullivan and Eddie Faulkner have already upgraded the offense's schematics, rhythm and productivity to the Nth power. And the offensive line was richly deserving of receiving a collective game ball afterward, with Tomlin stating afterward that Dan Moore, Isaac Seumalo, Mason Cole, James Daniels and Broderick Jones "provided the wave that we rode."

I'll stress anew: It's harmless. Harris would go on to laud Rudolph when asked specifically about him, and he did so with a warm, palpable authenticity, recalling how he's often telling Rudolph how "happy I am for you," even out in the huddle.

But it takes prodding to pull it out, presuming it comes out at all. The next individual, whether that's a coach or player, who pipes up Rudolph's represented the most significant difference over these past two weeks will be the first. It can range from Rudolph not being mentioned at all to a player in this locker room taking a close glance at my iPhone to check if I'd be recording what he'd say when I asked about Rudolph's impact.

Forgive me, please, if I'm over-reaching, but that feels ... weird.

And, with another risk of over-reaching, potentially perilous.

Look, I don't know now how to put this without offending anyone, so I'll just blurt it out: Whether these deeply flawed and even more deeply injury-damaged Steelers make the playoffs, that doesn't move the figurative needle much for me. Been to Kansas City for the requisite blowout, done that. Also, I've witnessed too many areas of much greater, much longer-term concern to start buying at the first bounce. This organization's got problems that'll need to be addressed by Art Rooney over the long winter ahead, and no amount of weekly warm-and-fuzzy should alter that priority.

I am, however, intensely interested in the franchise's future at quarterback.

I did fly out here focused almost entirely on how Rudolph might react to yet another few days of the requisite -- and, candidly, understandable -- cynicism about how he'd shown against the Bengals.

And I did, in turn, weigh how he fared above anything related to the rest of the team or this outcome.

So, if keeping in mind that Rudolph's 28, just three years older than Pickett, and that Rudolph's now logged half as many NFL starts, it sure felt more relevant that a quarterback already in the fold was achieving all of the following within those aforementioned numbers:

He threw across the middle. Super-decisive. Stood tall. Stayed where needed until Pat Freiermuth presented what wound up to be a crazy-easy 14-yard gain.

You know, like all the other teams do it.

"Mason's been great," Freiermuth would tell me, but only after prodding and without once referencing any predecessor or even improvement in the offense. "I can't say enough good things about him."

Another:

Sailed a little. Don't care. Got there.

Diontae Johnson's disgustingly open. Also don't care. Because that was a play-action, and I'd be told Johnson was his third read on the sequence.

"He's been great for us," Johnson would tell me of Rudolph, but only after prodding.

This one might not seem like much:

But fourth-down sneaks are part of winning football. Going for it on fourth down, something I'll bet Tomlin does about as casually as he'll squirm into a dentist's chair, that's part of winning football, too. So's managing the running game and, as Warren worded it, "The more Mason connects on those deep balls, the more we see teams back out of the box." Ask Pressley Harvin which of his one punt on this day was his favorite.

The deeper-dive fodder's that much more impressive:

To add clarity and context here: More than half of Rudolph's 274 passing yards came on routes where the target broke to the outside, always the most challenging actual throw a quarterback makes, and he'd nail all nine of them. That accounted, by and large, for his outrageous plus-17.2% of completed passes "over expected," meaning by degree of difficulty.

Someone tell me again: Who's starting in Baltimore next Saturday?

____________________

The offensive linemen, with respect to a remarkable show, weren't "the wave" Tomlin needed to reference. Neither were the running backs, with equal respect. Nor the wide receivers. Nor the tight ends. Nor even the new coordinators working with the old playbook.

They were all here before, to some extent. They were all part of those endless field-goal fests and single-digit scoring outputs.

Rudolph's what's new. He's the wave. And the fact that he's morphed, in the seeming snap of a finger, from forgotten backup to signing babies' backsides ...

... shouldn't detract from what he's done or, more important, what he still can do.

Similar to the Cincinnati postgame, though, Rudolph was still counting his blessings.

"As I've said, God orchestrates things in different ways," he'd essentially reiterate. "What happened last year? I didn't get a start. There wasn't an opportunity to jump in there, and I finished the year riding the old pine. So I'm thankful that I got a break and got an opportunity to lead our team. It's just fun, playing football after not doing a whole lot of that for the last few years."

He spent most of this postgame session praising the O-line, the running backs, the receivers, everyone but himself. Including when asked about the stirring sequences described atop this column.

"I was a little nervous. Not going to lie," he'd say in recalling that game-sealing throw to Pickens. "But I assumed that it would be in some sort of a zero or press-1-high look and figured George would win on the slant, so, yeah, he made big plays all day on third down and so did Diontae. So did a lot of guys on our squad today. That was a big one, but, yeah ... a bit nerve-wracking but rewarding."

Asked to talk about nothing but the throw, he'd reply, "There's probably a lot of quarterbacks that could've completed that one. No safety helped. George got the separation. I'm appreciative that. I think a lot of coaches and a lot of playcallers want to be conservative there and just run it out, but we've got a very aggressive head coach who -- I think he made that call at the end of the day -- so it paid off."

His head coach wasn't aggressive until the past two weeks. Maybe he'll eventually share why that is.

Then we can all get to the real conversation that needs to be occurring.

THE ESSENTIALS

• Game book
• Live file
• Highlights
• Team feed
• Standings
• Statistics
• Schedule
• Scoreboard

THE IN-GAME INJURIES

• T.J. Watt, outside linebacker, exited the game in the fourth quarter with an undisclosed injury but returned for the next series and, as Tomlin put it, "I think he's going to be OK."

• Joey Porter Jr., cornerback, exited in the second quarter with an undisclosed injury but also returned.

THE MULTIMEDIA

THE SCHEDULE

The regular-season finale's in Baltimore, and it'll kick off Saturday, 4:30 p.m. at M&T Bank Stadium.

THE FEED

Bookmark our Steelers Feed for much more on this game and all the latest on the team around the clock.

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