PITTSBURGH — Mike Tomlin wasted little time making it known that Mitch Trubisky is still the Pittsburgh Steelers’ starting quarterback while Kenny Pickett recovers from an injury.
Within minutes of starting his monologue during his weekly news conference Monday, Tomlin slid in some praise for Trubisky, saying the quarterback “picked up his play” as Thursday’s game against the New England Patriots wore on. If you watched the game, you know it would have been hard for Trubisky to keep up the horrid pace he set.
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“I thought that it is a reasonable expectation for him to be even better because of that experience, and because of the experience of having a full week’s prep this week,” Tomlin said.
Translation: Trubisky will start Saturday afternoon against the Indianapolis Colts in a game that the Steelers pretty much have to win to keep their realistic playoff hopes alive. Pickett was ruled out as he continues to recover from surgery to address a high-ankle sprain suffered nine days ago. Tomlin said previously he expects Pickett to return this season, but the team has not provided a timetable.
That puts the focus on the other two quarterbacks — Trubisky and Mason Rudolph.
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How long of a leash will Trubisky have in such an important game? That question was left open-ended. It will become more pressing if he starts the game anywhere close to how he did against the previously two-win Patriots when he had only one decent drive in his first 10. The Steelers fell into a 21-3 deficit by the second quarter and couldn’t recover.
Mike Tomlin on this “big game” pic.twitter.com/HG3AJs3bYG
— Mark Kaboly (@MarkKaboly) December 11, 2023
Could Rudolph, whose name was chanted by fans during the first half Thursday, get an opportunity? He continues to prepare as if he will. Last week, with the Steelers having time for only a walk-through and one practice before the Patriots’ game, there wasn’t time for many reps beyond Trubisky.
That will change this week.
“He’ll get an opportunity to get some work, and we’ll evaluate that work and evaluate his readiness,” Tomlin said of Rudolph. “But we’re not opening up competition and things of that nature. It’s just not an environment for that as we work.”
Rudolph’s numbers haven’t been bad. He just hasn’t had a lot of reps since his second season in 2019, when he filled in for the injured Ben Roethlisberger. Rudolph has 16 touchdowns and 11 interceptions compared to Pickett’s 13 and 13, despite starting 14 fewer games.
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Trubisky — the No. 2 pick in 2017 — is 2-4 in six starts with the Steelers and has played in five other games. He has seven touchdowns and eight interceptions, including three this year, and hasn’t played well in any of his appearances this year. He could have been intercepted three times last week. One was dropped, one was called back by penalty and one was caught and returned inside the red zone by Jabrill Peppers.
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The Steelers can’t let Saturday’s game go down the path of the last two. There is no room for error if they want to make the playoffs for the first time in two years.
They are in a six-team tie for the final two AFC wild-card spots with four games to play. The Steelers sit atop that group because of tiebreakers (a 5-4 conference record), which puts them in position for the sixth seed. They would play at Kansas City on the opening weekend of the postseason if it began today, but they are also a loss away from being 12th in a conference of 16 teams.
The Athletic, via Austin Mock’s model, gives Pittsburgh a 30 percent chance of making the playoffs, while The New York Times pegs it at 23 percent. Going into Week 13, Mock’s model had the Steelers’ chances at 77.2 percent, so things can move quickly in either direction.
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With a loss to the Colts and a certain number of outcomes going against them in Week 15, the Steelers’ odds of making the postseason could drop as low as 3 percent, according to the Times‘ simulator. But if Pittsburgh wins out, it is assured of a playoff spot, while winning three of four would put its chances over 90 percent.
Although the Steelers still have everything in front of them despite a historically poor five-day stretch, Tomlin said Monday he won’t use that fact as motivation.
“I’m not necessarily looking for positive messages to build them up,” the coach said. “I’m probably taking the opposite approach and talking about how urgent these weeks and opportunities in games are because the road is getting narrow. It’s a phrase that we like to use and we’re moving into the middle of December now. And so, that’s just acknowledging the truth.”
With so many teams bunched up in the AFC, tiebreakers will very likely come into play. The wild-card race often comes down to the team’s conference records. A loss Saturday would drop the Steelers to 5-5 in the AFC with games against the Cincinnati Bengals and Baltimore Ravens remaining, as well as a New Year’s Eve trip to Seattle, where they’ve lost seven of the eight all-time meetings. Pittsburgh would also have lost head-to-head tiebreakers against three teams in the race: Indianapolis, Houston and Jacksonville.
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“These games are big. This one’s big, big for us and big for them,” Tomlin said. “Opportunities to establish your position. You know, our business is winning. In the last couple of weeks, we have not handled business, and we understand that. And so, you know we’re working, and working with an edge.”
Tomlin has experience with both late-season collapses and turnarounds. Last year, the Steelers turned a 2-7 record into a 9-8 finish and narrowly missed the playoffs. When Roethlisberger was hurt in 2019, the Steelers cobbled together eight wins in 10 games behind Rudolph and Duck Hodges, only to lose the final three games to the Buffalo Bills, the 5-9 New York Jets and a Ravens team that started Robert Griffin III, finishing 8-8. A year later, they went 11-0 to start the season and lost four of five to sneak into the playoffs.
So Tomlin has seen it all. But that doesn’t mean he shares those experiences with his team.
“I don’t know that I ever compare present circumstances to the things of the past,” Tomlin said. “I have that experience, but the experiences that I have are different than the experiences that the team has. So I waste very little time doing those things. I really just focus on the variables at hand, the resources at hand, and how we can go about moving forward.”
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(Photo: Joe Sargent / Getty Images)
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