Mike Tomlin announced this week that he planned to stick with Duck Hodges as the Steelers starting quarterback over Mason Rudolph for the upcoming game against the Jets.
This, quite frankly, is the right decision. While Hodges had a poor game against the Bills, he should be allowed to rebound before being benched, as the Steelers gave Rudolph the same opportunity to do so.
Hodges carries himself with a more confident swagger than Rudolph does. He has proven to move the ball down the field a bit more effectively than Rudolph has and his teammates have really take to him.
It’s not his fault that Randy Fichtner chose to throw the ball 38 times against the number two pass defense in all of football vs. running the ball a total of 15 times against the same defense that ranks twenty first in the league, when the Steelers lost to Buffalo. Yes, Hodges made some very poor decisions and throws but at the same time, he was put in a position to fail.
While the coaches feel he’s the best fit for this team over Rudolph, and he is, they can’t expect him to make the same throws Ben Roethlisberger makes. They need to protect the undrafted rookie and set him up for success, not failure, as they did vs. the Bills.
With the way Hodges has played leading into the Buffalo game, I’m excited to see how he responds. I anticipate he will be good to go vs. the Jets, making the Bills game a distant memory. I’m basing this on what I’ve seen out of him thus far. He’s taken some hits and made some mistakes yet he’s continued to remain confident in the pocket, read the defense (as well as a rookie can) and bounce back after mistakes, in game, now he’ll need to translate that approach from one game to the next.
The decision to stick with Hodges is one purely for the 2019 season. This is not a decision about Rudolph’s future, or Hodges future for that matter, this is a business decision to give the Steelers their best chance to advance to and then hopefully through, the playoffs. If Hodges can get back to the form of “not killing the team” over these next two weeks, he’ll have done his job.
It’s going to take the help of a smothering defense along with the coaching staff, namely Fichtner making the right play calls for the rookie but if that happens, it will prove to be the right decision to roll with the Duck over Rudolph come Christmas time.