The Pittsburgh Steelers currently sit at 6-6 and, despite being in control of their own destiny in the AFC North, reasons for hope seem to be few and far between. After a listless loss to the Buffalo Bills last week Pittsburgh’s season feels like it’s close to total collapse. One silver lining to a potential season gone awry is the ability to look ahead to the future.
According to former Steelers QB Charlie Batch, the Steelers may use the final weeks of the season to evaluate rookie QB Will Howard if the season gets away from them. Batch joined Glenn Clark Radio and explained his reasoning for giving Will Howard a look this season.
“The issue that the Steelers have right now is they do have a young quarterback in Will Howard. They were excited about him coming out of Ohio State,” Batch said. “The challenge is he was hurt in training camp with a broken wrist. So when you have something that’s broken, it’s hard for you to go out there and actually get the physical reps. So they can’t even evaluate Will Howard up until this point because he just started practicing a couple weeks ago.”
As Batch mentioned, Howard was injured in early August during training camp and never got to play in the preseason. He was activated from IR in mid-November but missed valuable development time.
“So depending on how this season unfolds, if for whatever reason it gets away from them and they’re not in it in week 17 and 18, guess what?,” Batch continued. “We may see Will Howard getting some reps to see if he can get game action so they can get evaluation peace on him.”
Batch mentioned that it will be key for Pittsburgh to have an evaluation on Howard so that they have something to compare the quarterbacks in the upcoming rookie class to. During the season, however, backup quarterbacks rarely get many reps in practice. Certainly not enough for Pittsburgh to know if they are comfortable moving ahead with Howard, a sixth round rookie with zero NFL snaps, as their QB of the future.
In the scenario that Pittsburgh’s season bottoms out and they lose, let’s say, their next three games to fall to 6-9 on the season, is there any reason to see Aaron Rodgers or Mason Rudolph close out the season? While it would be an unceremonious way for Aaron Rodgers to likely finish his NFL career, it’s hard to argue that Batch’s suggestion to audition Will Howard would be what’s best for the franchise.
Surely Howard has learned a lot by sharing a QB room with Aaron Rodgers, even comparing the 42-year-old surefire Hall of Famer to a coach. If Rodgers and the Steelers offense can’t find a way to quickly find some traction, the results on the field may force the Steelers’ hand and bench the veteran for the rookie with the future in mind.
