As the Pittsburgh Steelers begin the process of hiring a new coach, the profile of most candidates seems similar: another team’s defensive coordinator, in his late 30s to mid-40s, no prior NFL head coaching experience. There are exceptions, but here’s betting the job goes to a younger version of Mike Tomlin. Expectations and duties won’t likely change.
How will that apply to the new starting quarterback?
Will his expectations and duties change?
Aaron Rodgers came to Pittsburgh to play for Tomlin. Now Tomlin is gone. Rodgers won’t be back.
That’s good. At 42, Rodgers had guile but not much else.
Using Rodgers this season and Russell Wilson in 2024 was a waste. The Steelers scraped to what they prefer to scrape to, but didn’t move forward. Did zilch for the long term.
When Justin Fields started the 2024 season with a 4-2 record, Tomlin shouldn’t have so quickly gone to Wilson once he healed from the calf injury he got in the preseason. Fields was 25 and a potential long-term starter. Fields had a first-round pedigree. Wilson was 36 and plucked off the scrap heap.
True, Fields went to the New York Jets and bombed.
So did Rodgers. It’s impossible to succeed with the Jets.
That brings us to Malik Willis, 26.
Green Bay’s backup this season, he’ll generate plenty of interest when NFL free agency begins March 9.
Willis only started once this year but looked dynamite. (That’s all it takes.) He went 18 for 21 for 288 yards with one touchdown pass and zero interceptions in a 41-24 home loss to Baltimore on Dec. 27. He tacked on 60 yards and two touchdowns in nine rushing attempts. Willis is Lamar Jackson Lite.
He’d be an excellent fit for the Steelers, perhaps force their offense into the modern era.
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The Steelers can still get their long-term answer at quarterback in this year’s draft or next year’s. But Willis would enable them to not rush that pick’s development, which they won’t anyway.
Assuming the Steelers wait till the 2027 draft, which seems likely, Willis would probably start a minimum of two seasons and could wind up being the long-term guy if the Steelers draft another Kenny Pickett.
Here’s why they won’t get Willis:
• He’s too much like Fields, and that didn’t pan out. (Or maybe the new coach wouldn’t take away Willis’ mobility, his top strength, and turn him into a fraidy-cat game manager like Tomlin did with Fields.)
• Willis can probably get more money, more years and better opportunity elsewhere. (The Steelers aren’t a destination team, even less so after Tomlin quit.)
• It’s bad optics to sign who you could have drafted in 2022 instead of Pickett. (The Pickett fiasco set the Steelers back five years, maybe more, and was 100% a Tomlin decision. Tomlin’s biggest mistake.)
Internally, the Steelers still have Mason Rudolph under contract for one more year and rookie Will Howard through 2028.
They see Rudolph as strictly a backup.
Howard has the inflated pedigree of having won a college football national championship at Ohio State and the real pedigree of being a sixth-round pick.
Yeah, I know, Tom Brady was a sixth-round pick. But Brady is the exception that proves the rule.
Howard looks the part at 6-foot-4. But his arm isn’t great and, as it says in a scouting report, “he can’t play chess against NFL defenses.”
Being a backup is Howard’s ceiling. But Steelers fans want to see him get a chance. Starting him is unlikely but would be a popular choice, a gambit that facilitates what I suggest, namely:
TANK FOR ARCH.
That would make a nice T-shirt.
Start Howard. Post the NFL’s worst record. (The citizens would support Howard for a while.) Get the first pick in the ‘27 draft. Take Arch Manning.
Manning is swimming in NIL and endorsement money, reportedly getting $6.8 million of the former, so he’s elected to stay at Texas for another season. He might have gone No. 1 in this year’s draft and, barring injury, will surely be the soup du jour at next year’s.
The Steelers should go 3-14 and draft Manning.
But the Steelers won’t tank, and ownership’s dogged determination to be mediocre will keep 3-14 from happening organically.
It’s why the Steelers will probably recycle another elderly quarterback. Or start Howard and somehow go 9-8. Being meh is in their DNA.
If the Steelers did draft Manning, he might refuse to come to Pittsburgh. To repeat, it’s not a destination franchise. Manning could pull what Uncle Eli did when he finagled his way to the New York Giants after being drafted first overall by San Diego in 2004.
Arch might prefer to play for a team that has an actual No. 2 wideout.
The quickest, best and most reliable cure for the Steelers’ quarterback dilemma is definitely a really bad season.
When they went 1-13 in 1969, they drafted Terry Bradshaw.
When they went 6-10 in 2003, they drafted Ben Roethlisberger.
Without them, the Steelers have won zero Super Bowls.
What don’t you get?
But the Steelers don’t get it, either.
