Steelers quarterback Kenny Pickett may or may not have refused to be the backup quarterback in the Week 17 matchup vs. the Seahawks this past Sunday.

It all depends on what you want to believe and who you want to believe.

Mark Madden, a highly-rated Pittsburgh sports talk radio host since the late-’90s, started this rumor on Monday when he Tweeted: “Just got told that Pickett 100 percent refused to be the backup. That the Steelers writers know that but won’t write it.”

The story blew up on Monday and continued to mushroom over the next 24 hours or so. The speculation was so intense that Pickett addressed the rumors while talking to reporters on Tuesday. Naturally, the second-year quarterback from the University of Pittsburgh was adamant that he did not refuse to be the team’s backup despite being 100 percent healthy. According to Pickett, who wasn’t officially cleared to play until Monday, he wasn’t cleared to be the backup for Sunday’s game, which was why he was listed as inactive.

For his part, Madden continuously called Pickett a liar on his radio show on Tuesday and repeated the sentiments in his controversial Tweet from Monday.

I have no doubt Madden was told this by someone closer to the Steelers than he is, whether it be a reporter, a current player, an ex-player, etc. It doesn’t necessarily make it true, but it doesn’t mean that it’s not just because Pickett said it wasn’t.

What would you say if you were Pickett and refused to be the backup after you were medically cleared to play following your ankle injury on December 3 and subsequent surgery? You were essentially just benched in favor of Mason Rudolph, a third-string quarterback who has led Pittsburgh to 64 points in the past two games.

You’d likely go on the offensive and vehemently deny the rumors, especially after the story grew huge legs, and you were prompted and prepped to address the matter with reporters.

In Pickett’s defense, you’d be just as vehement if the rumors weren’t true.

And this is why there is no point in continuing to speculate on the rumors about Pickett and his alleged refusal to be the backup against the Seahawks because he was peeved off that he lost his starting job to Rudolph.

We’re just never going to know the whole story.

Think about it, when was the last time we got the whole story about anything similar to this?

Remember the summer of 2021 when Dejan Kovocevic first reported that some Steelers coaches were pretty darn angry at second-year guard Kevin Dotson because of his lack of preparation following his promising rookie year?

There were a lot of heated debates over that story, and many didn’t want to believe it. But we could see from his second year on that Dotson had fallen out of favor with his coaches and remained in the dog house through the 2023 training camp before being traded to the Rams in late August.

Even with Dotson out of town, we have yet to get any clarification about those rumors from 2021.

I can go on and on with this. Heck, we’ve always assumed that Ben Roethlisberger was a piece of work when it came to dealing with Rudolph the moment he was selected in the third round of the 2018 NFL Draft. But while the two men have hinted at a frosty relationship, neither has outright come out and said that they did not really get along.

It’s been over five years since Antonio Brown apparently threw a football at Roethlisberger, stormed out of practice and was subsequently deactivated for the final game of the 2018 campaign. Yet, we still don’t exactly know what went down there.

The Steelers are a tight-lipped organization, and despite their obvious dysfunction, they have a way of keeping most things in-house.

As it turned out, Brown was a handful to deal with for most of his time with the Steelers, but we never really knew that until after he was traded in the 2019 offseason. Most of Brown’s former teammates in Pittsburgh aren’t even playing anymore, and you’d think many of them would be vocal about what a jerk he was in the locker room, but that hasn’t exactly been the case.

Something like the rumor involving Pickett and his refusal to dress as the Steelers’ backup quarterback against Seattle may never fully be known, not unless you want to wait until someone publishes an autobiography many years from now.

Reporters have sources, and sources are to remain anonymous–that’s journalism 101. And that’s also why it’s just so hard to know for sure what’s true and what’s not when a story like this breaks.

You might get some clarity on the Pickett situation in a couple of decades or so. By then, you may not care so much.

You do care a lot at the moment, but that’s pointless because you’re just not going to get the full picture.