If you have been a fan of football for any length of time, you may be familiar with the John Madden quote, "If you have two quarterbacks, you have none." If not, the idea is that if you have two QBs who you view as viable starting options, you can't really give them equal reps without hurting both of their chances to be the best they can be. For the Pittsburgh Steelers, they have a similar but different dilemma.
If you have three backup/developmental QBs, do you really have any?
That's the question that fans may be asking themselves if the recent report from Gerry Dulac of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette comes to fruition. According to Dulac, head coach Mike McCarthy had already decided that both of the Steelers' recent draft picks at the position, Will Howard and Drew Allar, would make the final roster before Friday's 17-0 beating at the hands of the New York Jets.
With Mason Rudolph being comfortably ahead of both as the No. 2 QB behind Aaron Rodgers, that means that Pittsburgh would be carrying four players at the league's most important position heading into the 2026 season. Not only is it rare for an NFL team to do such a thing, but there is a level of desperation that would be hard to ignore if they really do go through with this plan.
The Pittsburgh Steelers cannot justify keeping all four of their QBs on the final roster
There are plenty of roster construction concerns I could use as evidence that keeping all four QBs on the 53-man roster is a poor decision, and I will get to those. However, I think there is an easy way to view this situation that doesn't even require someone to go down that route.
If Howard, a 24-year-old who was a sixth-round pick for a reason, can't beat out a mediocre backup like Rudolph for the QB2 job, why burn a roster spot on him? Allar was always going to be essentially a draft-and-stash style project, so his spot on the team was never in question. But if Rudolph is as far ahead of Howard as it appears right now, do McCarthy and his staff really see much potential in him?
Perhaps it really is just a question of experience, and Rudolph's veteran status made it so Howard would have to be more than a tick better than him in camp to unseat him. Regardless, it screams of desperation that they would be willing to essentially throw away an opportunity to keep a player who actually has a chance to see the field and make some kind of impact, just to keep an extra QB who, if all goes well, won't see a single snap all season.
Ultimately, I understand how the Steelers got here. Swinging and missing on multiple replacements for Ben Roethlisberger over the last half-decade have made them want to turn over every stone possible to find one. Still, the odds of their next franchise QB being on the roster currently are slim to none, whether they keep all four of them or not.
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