The egregious praise heaped upon Will Howard by just about everyone in the 412 has been either inspiring or nauseating, depending on your level of delusion. (Misguided optimism, if you\u2019d rather.)<\/p>\n
The Steelers\u2019 staff isn\u2019t immune, as we heard from quarterbacks coach Tom Arth:<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s really smart.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a hard worker.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe level of detail in the preparation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s doing everything and more.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cExceeding expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Get a room.<\/p>\n
Head coach Mike McCarthy has been equally effusive.<\/p>\n
It all lends credence to the nonsensical: That there\u2019s a legit battle for the No. 2 QB spot between Mason Rudolph, a proven veteran backup, and Howard, who\u2019s never even taken a preseason snap.<\/p>\n
The Steelers\u2019 emphasis is \u201cwin now,\u201d as reinforced by having a 42-year-old quarterback.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also the franchise\u2019s philosophy, however betrayed by a decent level of \u201cnow\u201d last being achieved in the 2016 season.<\/p>\n
Given the desire to \u201cwin now,\u201d why cut Rudolph \u2014 who deputized to win three games at the end of the 2023 season and got the Steelers in the playoffs \u2014 and go with nothing but inexperience behind Rodgers?<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know, but bookmark this (or whatever it is the kids do):<\/p>\n
If the Steelers cut Rudolph and keep Howard, it will be the reason they don\u2019t make the playoffs.<\/p>\n
Rodgers is old. He played 16 games last season \u2014 not wholly incredible given his dedication to never getting hit but unlikely to occur again.<\/p>\n
If Rodgers misses games and Howard has to play, Howard won\u2019t be ready. Won\u2019t be good enough. Osmosis and wishful thinking don\u2019t trump experience and talent.<\/p>\n
But if Howard is really as promising as we\u2019re told, start him.<\/p>\n
That would be absurd, and annoy Rodgers, but would energize my industry and justify the constant praise lavished upon Howard.<\/p>\n
Howard is better as a concept, as a fantasy, than he\u2019s (maybe ever) going to be as a performer.<\/p>\n
If Howard can do this, that and the other, if he\u2019s so far ahead of the curve, why was he a sixth-round pick?<\/p>\n
How did Howard get better in everybody\u2019s eyes without playing? It\u2019s like a sociological experiment.<\/p>\n
From his lofty perch as a podcaster, two-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback Ben Roethlisberger commented on rookie QB Drew Allar doing a rather elementary three-step drop drill at OTAs:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I\u2019m watching him do three-step drops, that makes me incredibly nervous. When we did football camps, the first thing you\u2019re teaching the youngest kids is how to do a three-step drop. Maybe they\u2019re working on the three-step drop to be more efficient. But it looked to me like it was baby steps, teaching.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a bit condescending, but Roethlisberger can be.<\/p>\n
Roethlisberger was NFL-ready when he arrived in 2004, going 14-1 as a rookie. He likely can\u2019t relate to Allar being a project.<\/p>\n
Or maybe it\u2019s because Roethlisberger and Howard have the same agent. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The egregious praise heaped upon Will Howard by just about everyone in the 412 has been either inspiring…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-675354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}