Tim Benz: OK, ESPN. Here's your ‘alternate reality’ path for Steelers to draft a QB.

“Inglourious Basterds” is one of my favorite movies. It’s got an alternate outcome to World War II at the end.

The device of an alternate-outcome premise is popular on television lately. HBO’s “The Plot against America” is along those lines. So was Amazon’s “Man in the High Castle.”

Perhaps our reality is so crappy these days that it makes fantasy more palatable.

Well, consider what you are about to read somewhat in that vein. Sort of a 2020 NFL Draft version of O.J. Simpson’s “If I Did It.”

Only, I assume, LESS realistic.

Because few things strike me as less realistic than the speculation from some in the national media that the Steelers would use their first draft choice (No. 49 overall) on a quarterback.

ESPN’s Todd McShay recently projected Washington’s Jacob Eason winding up in Pittsburgh. His ESPN colleague Mel Kiper pontificated that Oklahoma’s Jalen Hurts would be the pick.

Nah. I don’t see it happening either.

But in the interest of our alternate reality experiment, let’s look at what it would take for the Steelers to pull the trigger on this kind of selection:

• Big Ben’s blessing: Incumbent quarterback Ben Roethlisberger is going to have to cosign on this plan.

When the Steelers drafted Mason Rudolph in 2018, Roethlisberger clearly wasn’t thrilled by the selection. Either because he felt his successor had been picked too early. Or because he wanted more immediate help for the team. At the time, he alluded to both reasons.

I imagine he’d feel the same way now. I don’t think Roethlisberger is rehabbing the daylights out of his elbow to lose out on the starter’s job. Nor would he be ready to relinquish it after just one year if things go well in 2020.

If those circumstances do happen in our speculative timeline, that rookie QB may not start until 2022.

Thus, the Steelers would be blowing off immediate help at No. 49 in terms of a potential contributor at running back or wide receiver, or depth on defense.

If you think Roethlisberger is going to be OK with that, you are buying into this alternate reality stuff more than I expected.

• Big Ben’s bum elbow: Picture this. The Steelers make their pick. It’s a quarterback. And eventually, on Zoom, we hear general manager Kevin Colbert say, “Fellas, Ben’s arm isn’t progressing as well as we’d hoped and he’s going to need a little more time coming back.

Eh, who am I kidding? He’s done.”

Like I said, alternate reality.

No, the Steelers wouldn’t phrase it that way. But if the franchise would use its first pick on a quarterback, I would have to believe questions exist about the stability of Roethlisberger’s elbow.

• The right guy: The perfect quarterback is going to have to be there at No. 49. As of right now, CBS Sports rates four quarterbacks as first-round players: Joe Burrow (LSU), Tua Tagovailoa (Alabama), Justin Herbert (Oregon) and Jordan Love (Utah St.)

If the Steelers are quietly infatuated with one of those guys and they fall to the mid-second round, I suppose that could change things.

If not, CBS rates Eason 41st and Hurts 103rd. Georgia’s Jake Fromm is at No. 116. If Colbert does select one of those three, prepare to hear him utter something similar to the narrative that we heard about Rudolph having a reported “first-round grade” when they got him in the third round.

• Mason madness: The Steelers have given Rudolph gobs of support since the season ended. Both in terms of his depth chart status as the backup and the situation with Myles Garrett.

Rudolph would have to burst into Colbert’s house on draft night and shout, “Hey! You know all that stuff Garrett claimed I said? Yup, I said it. And now, I’m going to go play video games with my new best friend from NASCAR, Kyle Larson. You familiar with him?”

That alternate reality is too much for anyone to buy.

Perhaps Garrett might. After all, no one does alternate reality better than him.

Well, unless you are an NFL draft analyst mocking a quarterback to the Steelers in the second round.

Come next Friday night, if I’m wrong, I’ll mock myself. But I’ll do so wondering what kind of alternate dimension I’ve entered.