PITTSBURGH — We can stop pretending now.
At least I hope we can.
For all I know, Mike Tomlin will elevate Mason Rudolph back to the second team Wednesday. Maybe that's all part of "the plan" Tomlin and his assistants keep referencing. But to what end?
Rudolph was never going to be a viable contender for the starting quarterback job and shouldn't be one for the backup job, either. It's time for the Steelers to find a taker and trade him, for his sake and theirs. If the Detroit Lions or another team should offer anything of value, general manager Omar Khan should gladly accept it and mercifully move on.
Rudolph deserves credit for preparing himself diligently and playing well in camp. Tomlin did him right, first by giving him plenty of reps in the quarterback "competition," from spring into summer, then by giving him the chance to put something of significance on tape in the first exhibition game.
Rudolph delivered a decent performance, too, although his passer rating would have been in the low 70s instead of over 100 if the ball he put right in a Seahawks defender's hands had been caught.
But you can't keep rotating three quarterbacks forever, and we all know the Steelers do not believe in Rudolph as Ben Roethlisberger's successor. Them signing maybe the best available free agent quarterback on the market and then taking one before any other team in the draft was a clue, right? And then, as if to drive the point home, they drafted another quarterback in the seventh round.
Rightly or wrongly, Mitch Trubisky has been the starter — acting as such and treated as such — since the moment he arrived. Kenny Pickett was the first-round pick — and not just any pick, but one who'd started games in five different college seasons and was about to turn 24.
Pickett's older than Mac Jones and two years older than Trey Lance, for goodness sake. I'm pretty sure he's the only man in history who played sports at Pitt longer than Carl Krauser. You don't draft an experienced guy that high to make him rot with the third team all season, depriving him of valuable backup reps in practice. You don't just bury him for a year.
In fact, you look for reasons to play him. Tomlin fell for Pickett, which is why he used a precious first-round pick on him.
Right?
Pickett was elevated to the second team Monday and Tuesday after his lights-out performance Saturday night. He even took some first-team reps. That actually makes sense. I suppose I could still be surprised. Maybe Rudolph will travel to Cincinnati the weekend of Sept. 11 as the No. 2 guy. I just find that more and more difficult to envision, and would find it even harder to justify.
Yet, for what it's worth, this was Khan on the Pat McAfee Show earlier this week, on the possibility of a Rudolph trade: "You take calls, but I'll be honest with you: We don't have any intention of trading any of those guys. We really like them. There's some decisions to be made, but I'd be surprised if anything happens down that path."
Short of trading Rudolph, the sensible move would be to keep him taking token reps with the third team. Honestly, though, I'd do him one final solid by getting him out of here. It just seems he's been star-crossed from the day he arrived, when Roethlisberger ripped the Steelers for drafting him, then did not appear to take a liking to him. That couldn't have been more obvious.
Then came the crushing hit from Earl Thomas and the sad sight of a facemask-less Rudolph not even getting a cart to take him to the locker room. Then came the Myles Garrett incident. Then came the benching in favor of Duck Hodges. Then came last year's shaky performance against the Lions, all the offseason moves aimed at making sure Rudolph wouldn't be the guy, and finally fans booing him after his first play Saturday.
Rudolph didn't deserve that, but it was yet another sign that the situation here is no longer tenable. I'm guessing that if you injected Rudolph with truth serum, he'd tell you he'd like to start over elsewhere. Who wouldn't, given the same set of circumstances?
Pickett has moved up the food chain, or so it would appear, and this is no time to move him back down. Trubisky is trending toward an opening day start.
Good for Rudolph that he competed and might even have outplayed the competition at times this summer. But the charade can only last so long.
The Steelers need to end it.
