Steelers final report card: Grading each positional group for the 2023 season
By Tommy Jaggi
The Pittsburgh Steelers ultimately fell short of the ultimate goal in 2023. For the seventh consecutive season, Mike Tomlin's team failed to record a playoff win as they were bounced from the tournament with a Wild Card loss against the Bills.
Not everything was a complete disaster. The Steelers managed to remain a competitive football team despite dealing with significant injuries to several of their best players. Still, this team finished the year with a negative point differential on the season and showed that they probably weren't as good as their 10-7 record would seem to suggest.
It's time for Pittsburgh's front office to go back to the drawing board and look for ways to improve in 2024. But before we do that, here's my final report card for every positional group on the Steelers for their performance during the 2023 season.
Quarterback: D+
Even with questionable play-calling, I'm, not cutting the Steelers much slack here. When you compare their quarterback performances to those around the league, it's hard to argue that they weren't near the bottom of the barrel.
When Kenny Pickett was the signal-caller for Pittsburgh, the Steelers managed just 172.5 passing yards per game and 6 total passing touchdowns in 12 games. Things went from mediocre to horrible in an instant, as Mitch Trubisky's ugly performance warrants a straight-up 'F'. He failed to lead his team to win against an easy schedule as a starter and he couldn't take care of the football.
Mason Rudolph was objectively the best of the group. But the fact that Pittsburgh had to resort to their third-string quarterback showed just how bad things got at the position in 2023. While Rudolph went 3-0 to close the regular season, he accounts for just a small fraction of the year of QB play in Pittsburgh.
Meanwhile, Rudolph didn't have gaudy numbers with just 1 TD and 179.8 yards per game as a starter. The collective performance from the Steelers' QB group in 2023 left a lot to be desired.