Mike Vick, Duck Hodges led Steelers to memorable road wins against Chargers

Mike Tomlin spent the week preparing his backup quarterback to start a road game against the Chargers.

He has some experience on the subject.

The past two trips to southern California — first, San Diego and then Los Angeles — featured the Pittsburgh Steelers playing without their starting quarterback against the Chargers.

It was set to be three in a row until the Steelers announced Saturday that Ben Roethlisberger will be activated from the reserve/covid list, clearing him to start Sunday night at SoFi Stadium.

His start will come at the expense of Mason Rudolph, who took all of the snaps with the first-team offense in practice this past week.

The last time Roethlisberger started a road game against the Chargers was so long ago that Tomlin wasn’t even his coach. It occurred in October 2006, Bill Cowher’s final season, and the Steelers lost a 23-13 decision.

Tomlin is 2-0 with backups playing the position, and at his weekly press conference, he briefly cited the Steelers’ most recent trip to Los Angeles in 2019 while talking about the spate of injuries and covid-related illnesses his team dealt with this week.

“I think about the last time we went to L.A. to play these guys,” he said. “We went out there with Duck Hodges and had a pretty good day.”

The Steelers had another good one in October 2015 when a knee injury to Roethlisberger a few weeks earlier put the Monday Night Football start in the hands of Mike Vick.

Vick led the Steelers to a pair of fourth-quarter touchdowns capped by Le’Veon Bell’s 1-yard touchdown run out of the Wildcat formation on the final play to eke out a 24-20 victory.

The game was the penultimate start and appearance in Vick’s 13-year NFL career. He completed 50% of his passes, connecting 13 of 26 times, for 203 yards, one touchdown and an interception.

Vick, though, hit Markus Wheaton for a 72-yard score to tie it 17-17 midway through the fourth quarter. The next time Vick touched the ball, the Steelers were trailing by three points. He engineered a 12-play, 80-yard drive that put the Steelers a yard away from the end zone with one last play to be run.

The Steelers got to the doorstep by finding tight end Heath Miller for a 16-yard gain.

“Mike put us on his shoulders,” Miller said after the game. “He deserves the credit.”

Tomlin bypassed a tying field goal and sent out Bell in the Wildcat. He took care of the final yard to give Vick the victory.

“It’s not how you start,” Vick said afterward. “It’s how you finish.”

That game was played at Qualcomm Stadium. The Chargers had relocated to Los Angeles and were playing at 30,000-seat Digital Health Sports Park — a converted soccer stadium — when the Steelers visited in 2019.

Roethlisberger’s season was over because of right elbow surgery, and Rudolph was concussed the previous week when the Steelers lost in overtime to Baltimore, dropping their record to 1-4.

That put the start in the hands of an undrafted free agent who gained his fowl nickname because of his proficiency as a championship duck caller.

Devlin Hodges started against the Chargers, and Duck-mania (as short-lived as it was) began in prime time that Sunday. Hodges led the Steelers to a 24-0 second-half lead before they held on for a 24-17 victory.

Hodges played up to his nickname by wearing a T-shirt that he bought for $5 at Venice Beach that weekend. It was a photo of a duck that read, “I’M THE BOSS.” It was that kind of swagger that Tomlin admired.

“We have a lot of confidence in him,” Tomlin said postgame. “We haven’t been bashful about that. He has a lot of confidence in himself. I think that’s what makes people gravitate to him.”

Hodges wasn’t spectacular although he completed 15 of 20 passes. He threw for just 132 yards with no touchdowns, and he tossed an interception in the fourth quarter that led to a Chargers touchdown.

Still, nothing could wipe the smile from his face.

“That was something that I’ve dreamed about,” Hodges said that night. “That’s something that I’ve always believed could happen.”

With Rudolph unlikely to complete the backup quarterback trifecta, Roethlisberger will try to fare better than he did 15 years ago when he last started a road game against the Chargers. He threw two interceptions and no touchdown passes in a loss that dropped the Steelers to 1-3 a year after they won the Super Bowl.

Even with Roethlisberger under center Sunday night, the Steelers will be short-handed. They will play without Minkah Fitzpatrick, T.J. Watt and Joe Haden on defense.

“We’re always excited about having an opportunity to smile in the face of adversity,” Tomlin said. “The adversity that life in the game of football presents, whether it’s injuries or covid or otherwise, that’s just something that always has my attention, something that we’re always ready to stand up against.”