BALTIMORE -- The winds whipped and whirled so wildly through the near-freezing temps at M&T Bank Stadium on this most miserable of wintry settings for an NFL game that, in all honesty, it was tough to tell how hard it was raining.
Up in the cozy comfort of the closed-off press box, anyway.
"Hard," Diontae Johnson would clarify for me early Saturday evening, this after the Steelers swept away the archrival Ravens, 17-10, to preserve their playoff hopes for one more day. "It was cold, it was rainy, a little bit of snow ... really hard."
How hard, exactly?
Ask the camera operators and photographers who couldn't keeping their lenses clean for more than a millisecond:
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The Steelers and Ravens play through a winter-storm downpour Saturday in Baltimore.
How hard?
"Crazy. Never stopped," Calvin Austin III would tell me, and I swear I could still hear the kid's sneakers squeaking. "Never seen anything like that."
Me neither. Not in a lifetime of covering such events. Three straight hours of 100-percent precip. Might as well have met up in Atlantis.
As we spoke, Myles Jack walked by.
"Anyone have any socks?" he'd beseech no one in particular. "I'm all out. Need socks."
Off in a different direction, Broderick Jones sat silently at his stall, wrapping his feet in a towel. Or two towels. Or, quite possibly, an entire laundromat of towels. My dude's got some feet.
And yet, somehow, spectacularly, this scene also saw this:
— DK Pittsburgh Sports (@DKPSmedia) January 7, 2024
Oh, for real.
Watch it again. Do that. Everyone who's followed this franchise the past few years deserves to feel a little warm all over.
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I'll touch on the rest in a moment, but it's Mason Rudolph's throw that made it.
I checked with the recipient:
“It was perfect," Johnson would reply. "Right through two defenders. It was on me, right where I needed it. I was able to body-catch it and keep striding to score.”
Specific credit where due, in no particular order:
• The play was crafted by Mike Sullivan and Eddie Faulkner, one of several new wrinkles they've added to the Matt Canada playbook. "A great look by the OC," Johnson called it.
• Despite the knowledge that the weather'd be borderline un-pass-able, Mike Tomlin ran it multiple times in practice through the week, Johnson confirmed for me, as part of his recent "scared money don't make money" trend toward being more aggressive.
• Najee Harris rushed 26 times for 112 yards, topping 1,000 of the latter now for all three of his NFL seasons. He was the go-to piece here, as Tomlin would acknowledge, due to the weather, and he more than delivered, including this first-quarter touchdown:
— DK Pittsburgh Sports (@DKPSmedia) January 7, 2024
Which, naturally, kept the Ravens' defense honest enough that they couldn't spare extra coverage for Johnson on the touchdown at hand.
• George Pickens delivered as a distraction in his own way, eating up double-coverage all day as part of John Harbaugh's predictable tendency to try to erase the opponent's top threat.
Pickens was thus left with no catches ... and no complaints, per Rudolph: "I told George I was very proud of the way he handled it. I thought it was a very mature, team-first attitude. He wasn't whining or asking for the ball. He knew schematically they were trying to take him away. I think that's a form of flattery from a defense. He blocked hard all day, he was excited for his teammates, and that was awesome to see.”
I can vouch for the excited part. He was having a visible blast in the locker room.
• Pat Freiermuth ran a designed decoy route up there, aimed at peeling at least one coverage element -- and as many eyes as possible -- away from Johnson. That'd become hook, line and sinker for the inside linebacker, Patrick Queen, and for both safeties, Marcus Williams and Andrew Adams, at least once Rudolph had looked them all off by casting a glance toward his tight end. As Freiermuth would tell me, "We got the coverage we were looking for."
Good time to slow it down, and from a different angle:
— DK Pittsburgh Sports (@DKPSmedia) January 7, 2024
• Johnson obviously did his part, too. One of football's best route-runners followed through despite having his own feet to the frost, then erupted past and away from his assigned corner, Rock Ya-Sin. And with all that momentum, the safeties never had a prayer of reversing course.
• I'll toss an additional flower onto the pile for Sullivan, too, for surviving a flying chest-bump:
— DK Pittsburgh Sports (@DKPSmedia) January 7, 2024
But again, it was the throw.
“They took Pat away," Rudolph began his reply when asked about the sequenced. "They did a good job with taking him away anywhere on the ball. They were dropping defensive linemen or just hugging him immediately with a linebacker. We’re not going to get into the read, but they took Pat away. So the ball went to 'Tae. He did a great job after the catch and split those guys and ran fast like he always does and scored.”
But it was that throw. And all the throws, for that matter.
All due respect to the process as a whole, but Rudolph completed 18 of his 20 passes in these obscene circumstances, accounting for 152 yards and no interceptions. Of those two incompletions, one was a misfire across the middle that Rudolph was fortunate Williams didn't pick off, and the other was a deep ball down the left sideline that Johnson would've/should've caught had he not strikingly slowed for a second to try to shove off a defender.
So, um, one bad ball.
On the opening series.
Out of 20 total attempts.
In what Rudolph would acknowledge, but only upon being asked, "was probably the most challenging weather I’ve had to deal with in my career."
And for his three full starts:
• Wins-losses: 3-0
• Attempts-Completions: 53-71
• Yards: 716
• Touchdowns: 3
• Interceptions: 0
• Passer rating: 118.0
Those three touchdowns, by the way, all have spanned 60-plus yards. The Dolphins' Tua Tagovailoa has four such passes. No one other than Rudolph has more than two.
"Obviously, Rudolph has done a nice job," was all this latest performance would merit from Tomlin in the opening statement of the head coach's postgame presser, at which point he'd turn the topic to other players.
In the question-and-answer portion of the session, though, when asked about the poise Rudolph sustained despite having the Ravens pop the ball loose from him twice early, Tomlin replied, "Like I mentioned several weeks ago when we put him in the lineup, he has an unshakeable confidence in himself. It is real.”
Yeah, it really is.
And to repeat my written refrain from Seattle a week ago, it's OK to express it, too.
So this time, upon canvassing the locker room to collect the thoughts of Rudolph's teammates on his role in saving their season -- back-to-back home losses to 2-10 opponents, followed by beating three teams with winning records -- I wasn't about to accept the company line.
Sparing everyone the standard answers I got on the record, and leaving their names out, one player replied when I asked if Rudolph's made the biggest difference, "You watch these games. What the F--- do you think?" and the other responded simply, "Come on, man."
That's the truth.
So was this from Cam Heyward, one of the few in this atmosphere with the clout to say what he'd want on the matter: “You know, every week, he handles it. He handles his composure very well. If you look at that game, we were just looking for a spark on that third-and-4, and he finds it right to Diontae for the touchdown. You need that from the quarterback position. We’ll rally around any quarterback, but Mason’s played really well as of late.”
Nah, should've stopped at that previous sentence: You need that from the quarterback position.
No matter what might or might not be purring around the sport's pivotal position, you need this level of stability with even the standard stuff:
— DK Pittsburgh Sports (@DKPSmedia) January 7, 2024
— DK Pittsburgh Sports (@DKPSmedia) January 7, 2024
— DK Pittsburgh Sports (@DKPSmedia) January 7, 2024
Don't skip those. Don't shrug them off. That's winning football.
That's also the future.
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So, where were we again?
That's right: Who should be the starting quarterback?
Still a question for anyone?
Hello?
Look, this conversation can be had without burying Kenny Pickett. Besides, there's no need for that in any context. He's in the second year of a rookie contract. He's not going anywhere for at least another two. He's a professional, he's got genuine promise, and he's eminently affordable.
Sure, there'll be storylines, both real and contrived along the way. Ian Rapoport of NFL Network put out a hilarious one Saturday morning, breaking the big news that the Steelers still have a "ton of confidence that Pickett can be a franchise starting quarterback.”
Whoa! They do? No way!
And from that, other nonsense spun out that this mean Pickett's the current default No. 1. As if Art Rooney, Omar Khan and Tomlin are currently investing time in plotting out next season.
This is about Rudolph and Rudolph alone.
We're now formally past the let's-just-see-what-he's-got-next-week phase. All three of Rudolph's opponents were over .500, including both the Bengals and Seahawks at the time. Two were division rivals, none more bitter than the one here. Two were on the road, including way out in Seattle. And the Ravens, of course, are all the way atop the NFL's overall standings. Even resting Lamar Jackson and a handful of others, they're better than league average.
On top of all that, it's not as if Rudolph's peeking above the low bar in Pittsburgh. He's been one of the best, if not the very best, quarterback in the entire league over these three weeks. Only Jackson and Joe Flacco have had a higher passer rating.
So it's not the caliber of play. It's not the competition. It's not the crunch-time component. It's not ... anything at all that's been thrown his way. Not least of which, it should be remembered, he's had three whole weeks of first-team practice reps. Before that, he'd been mimicking the opposing quarterback as part of the scout team.
I'll ask once more: Why does everyone -- inside and even outside, I sense -- seem to be tiptoeing?
What's still at hand? Training camp scrimmages in Latrobe? The next preseason? Who'll take showings in either of those seriously ever again?
Tomlin spoke it regarding Rudolph's confidence, but it's applying across the board: This is real.
Except maybe to the man himself, who basically blushed when asked after this game if he's fully processed all that's occurred within the past month: “Not really, no. But I’m just thankful. I’m enjoying each day, whether it's practice or visiting with you guys or playing out there. It’s been a long time, and I’m just so thankful and grateful for the opportunity.”
Bring in someone to push him and Pickett over the offseason. Be real with Pickett in every way. Be open-minded in the NFL Draft. But sign Rudolph to a new contract -- believe me, he'll stay -- and make clear to all concerned his new status.
Anyone suggesting any scenario that might bury Rudolph as a backup again ... that's about as all wet as Jack's old socks.
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Mason Rudolph sets the Steelers' offense in the third quarter Saturday in Baltimore.
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 third quarter after his left knee collided with Montravius Adams. It's a Grade 3 MCL sprain, per a source. He was almost immediately ruled out.
• Eric Rowe, safety, suffered a neck injury in the second quarter, but was able to return to the game and said afterward he's "fine."
THE MULTIMEDIA
THE SCHEDULE
Still to come, I guess, right?
THE FEED
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