As I sat down to watch Steelers’ head coach Mike Tomlin’s weekly press conference on Monday afternoon (btw, Twitter, you don’t have to tell us everything Tomlin says right after he says it–we all have YouTube), I knew that one of his first announcements would be that Mason Rudolph was going to get the start at quarterback vs. the Bengals this Saturday at Acrisure Stadium.

How did I know that? For starters (no pun intended), Rudolph came in to mop up for veteran Mitch Trubisky in the final moments of a very sad 30-13 loss to the Colts at Lucas Oil Stadium on Saturday. Trubisky had taken every single snap at quarterback since the moment Kenny Pickett left the Cardinals game with a bad ankle injury on December 3, and the results were less than desirable.

Another reason: Come on, bruh. The results have been less than desirable for the Steelers offense since about Halloween of the 2020 season. However, unlike the 34 or 35 games right after Ben Roethlisberger shaved his beard and tried to again play quarterback after suffering an elbow injury that forced him to miss all but six quarters of the 2019 regular season, there is nobody left for Tomlin and the rest of the Steelers organization to have to cater to.

OK, maybe Pickett because of his 2022 draft status, but the way he and the offense were going, I would have given that another five or six games before that would have meant next to nothing.

The Steelers didn’t have to cater to Roethlisberger because he was a former first-round draft pick. The Steelers had to cater to Roethlisberger because he was arguably the greatest quarterback in franchise history. He led Pittsburgh to three Super Bowls in six years and helped to put two Lombardis in the trophy case. Sure, that all happened before 2011, but Roethlisberger had still been at the top of his game as recently as 2018. He had also been paid a lot of money and was still counting a ton against the salary cap. Furthermore, he was a team and locker-room leader. You don’t bench a guy like that, no matter how horrid the offense may have looked in 2020 and 2021. Oh yeah, and I’m pretty sure the Steelers were scared to death of Roethlisberger. All teams walk on eggshells when they have a franchise guy in their building (unless that guy happens to be Terry Bradshaw or Eli Manning). You don’t want to upset them. After all, they have their own set of keys.

Pickett had yet to earn that kind of respect. Nobody in that quarterback room truly had the cachet to be shielded from the bench.

When a team doesn’t THE GUY, it’s going to continue to shuffle the deck until it finds the answers. I don’t care what else is going on with your team, true progress will never be possible until you find THE GUY.

Is Rudolph that guy? It doesn’t seem likely, but it sure as heck doesn’t feel like Pickett or Trubisky will be him, either.

Like I said last week, welcome to the 1980s. Actually, you can replace the 1980s with the late-’90s/2000, a time when Kordell Stewart, Mike Tomczak or even Kent Graham could have been the starting quarterback on any given Sunday. Heck, I remember hearing calls for Tee Martin in 2000. Martin was a fifth-round pick out of Tennessee in the 2000 NFL Draft. Why were people calling for Martin? Why not? He couldn’t have been any worse than those other guys.

It is now Rudolph’s turn to try and right the ship. If he does, it will cause Tomlin and the organization to think long and hard about the future of their quarterback position. But will it really? When you’re an organization that’s been struggling at quarterback for a while, you just want to find answers. You’re simply looking for a way to get your program moving in the right direction.

I realize that politics are still involved when it comes to a player like Pickett, but if the Steelers somehow defeat Cincinnati this Saturday and look good with Rudolph running the offense…let’s just say Pickett’s ankle injury will likely need a little more time to heal.

The Steelers are just trying to win a game right now, and they can’t worry about hurting anyone’s feelings. They certainly weren’t going to care about wounding Trubisky’s psyche.

The Steelers will now start three different quarterbacks since Roethlisberger retired following the 2021 season.

And water is wet.