Steelers Insider Gerry Dulac on Pittsburgh’s Long-Term Plan at QB Position

Aaron Rodgers is 42 years old and has already said this is it. The Steelers know it. So the question Rich put to Gerry Dulac is the one Pittsburgh has been dancing around since Ben Roethlisberger walked away: who's next, and what's the plan?

Dulac's answer was refreshingly unsentimental. The veteran on the field right now is the bridge, not the future, and the franchise is treating this season as an audition for everyone behind him.

"This is a veteran team. They think they can win and they want to win now, which is why they brought Aaron Rodgers back," Mason Rudolph told Dulac, and that framing runs through the whole succession question. Rodgers is here to win now. The development happens underneath him.

Where that development gets real, Dulac said, is when the pads come on. OTAs and minicamp are the appetizer. Training camp and preseason games are the test. He expects something like 90 to 95 percent of the preseason snaps to be split between Will Howard and Drew Lock.

Lock is not going anywhere. As Dulac pointed out, the Steelers do not cut third-round picks, a habit that goes back to a cornerback they let go in the mid-1980s. Short of a complete collapse, Lock has a roster spot.

It's Howard who has Dulac's attention. Watching him in practice, Dulac said Howard looked noticeably more comfortable, and the arm played up. "I saw him make a couple passes where if you weren't watching, you might think it was one of the other quarterbacks," he said. The strong arm everyone wondered about appears to be there.

That leaves Mason Rudolph, and Dulac does not see him going anywhere either. The logic is simple. Pittsburgh is not going to hand its offense to two young quarterbacks who have never appeared in an NFL game if Rodgers goes down. Rudolph is the insurance policy a win-now team keeps. The catch is that the Steelers are unlikely to carry four quarterbacks, so something has to give before the season starts.

Then Rich raised the scenario that should make Steelers fans sit up: what if the quarterback who starts in 2027 isn't on the roster yet?

Dulac didn't dismiss it. He won't call any of the current group a franchise quarterback, noting there are only a handful of those in the entire league. But he sketched a more realistic middle path, a quarterback good enough to keep the team winning until Pittsburgh can go find someone better.

That, he said, is exactly why the Steelers keep spending draft capital on the position. They know the revolving door since Roethlisberger left can't continue.

"They're not stupid," Dulac said. "They know it's the most important position in sports. And so they want to try and get it right." This offseason is the next swing.