Oliver Luck: Steelers tried to sign Landry Jones from XFL

Instead of Duck Mania, would Pittsburgh right now be Landry Land? According to XFL commissioner Oliver Luck, perhaps so.

Luck, the former West Virginia quarterback and athletic director, told the Tampa Bay Times that the Pittsburgh Steelers tried to sign quarterback Landry Jones in September after Ben Roethlisberger suffered his season-ending elbow injury.

Per Luck through tampabay.com, the situation was illustrative of how XFL season contracts are binding and that players who have committed to take part in the reboot of the spring football league in 2020 cannot bolt for the NFL until after the XFL season ends.

“This happened to Landry Jones,” Luck told reporter Thomas Bassinger. “Ben Roethlisberger got hurt, and Landry had backed up Ben for years. First phone call was, ‘Can Landry come to the Steelers?’ ‘Nope, sorry. He’s ours. We signed him’”

What Oliver Luck learned from the rise and fall of the Alliance of American Football, via @tometrics #xfl #vipers #tampabayvipershttps://t.co/XXeo5gTJtp

— TampaBayTimesSports (@TBTimes_Sports) December 11, 2019

A former Oklahoma star, Jones spent five seasons with the Steelers after being a fourth-round pick in 2013. He appeared in 18 games, starting five, and passed for 1,130 yards and eight touchdowns with seven interceptions.

Jones was cut at the end of the 2018 training camp when the Steelers elected to go with younger passers Josh Dobbs and Mason Rudolph to back up Ben Roethlisberger.

That was the case again heading into this season. But the Jacksonville Jaguars traded a fifth-round pick for Dobbs after their starting quarterback got injured during their Week 1 game. After the Steelers’ Week 2 loss, Roethlisberger was placed on injured reserve, and without being able to add Jones the Steelers promoted Devlin Hodges from their practice squad.

Duckmania is in full flight, and the instigator of this cultural phenomenon is well aware of the impact he is making with #Steelers Nation.https://t.co/g1T4FKSF1A

— Tribune-ReviewSports (@TribSports) December 5, 2019

“Duck” had impressed as an undrafted rookie but was cut at the end of camp. He was signed to the practice squad after the trade of Dobbs. After Rudolph began to struggle while filling in for Roethlisberger, coach Mike Tomlin turned to Hodges — and the rest, as they say, is history.

Hodges is 3-0 as a starter and came on in relief to rally the Steelers to another win. He has a 103.2 passer rating and has completed 71.3% of his passes.

Incidentally, Luck used the Steelers for his other example of an NFLK team trying to poach the XFL, too. Luck said the Steelers tried to sign quarterback Phillip Walker as a scout-team stand-in for a week.

“The Steelers… called and said, ‘We’d like to have Phillip for a week because we’re playing the Ravens and Phillip’s a little bit like Lamar Jackson,’” Luck said. “‘We’ll sign him to a one-week contract so we can get accustomed to that kind of quarterback.’ We said, ‘Thanks for the compliment, but we’re not going to let him go.’”

The Steelers signed Taryn Christion for Ravens week instead.

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