The Pittsburgh Steelers know who their starting quarterback will be Week 1 against the Atlanta Falcons. That’s QB Aaron Rodgers.
The bigger question is this: Who will be Rodgers’ backup this season? Will it be second-year QB Will Howard? Or will veteran QB Mason Rudolph keep that role?
If you believe the original quarterback “depth chart” at the start of Organized Team Activities, it’s Will Howard. However, beat writer Mark Kaboly is pretty confident that Mason Rudolph will back up Rodgers. How confident?
“I’m gonna give it a good 80 percent chance of (Rudolph) being the backup come September 13,” Kaboly said Friday on 93.7 The Fan’s The PM Team.
Since new head coach Mike McCarthy took over in Pittsburgh, we’ve heard him talk up Will Howard plenty. So, it makes sense that he gave Howard the first crack at team snaps in OTAs. Many people took that as a sign Howard would be the backup. Or, at least in the case of ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler, “the inside track” to being Rodgers’ backup.
However, Kaboly is much more confident that it will be Mason Rudolph in that spot. He’s not the only one, either. Gerry Dulac believes Rudolph has the backup spot regardless of how the snap counts look “until someone proves otherwise.”
That’s the 20 percent Kaboly was unwilling to throw completely behind Rudolph. Obviously, no one is putting third-round rookie QB Drew Allar’s name in the ring for the backup spot. So, Kaboly is saying Will Howard has a 20 percent shot at being the backup come Week 1.
What must Howard do to prove to Kaboly he’s worthy of backing up Aaron Rodgers?
“I think a lot of it’s gonna have to do with the preseason games,” Kaboly said. “He’s gonna have to show or prove to whoever makes these decisions – McCarthy, Arth, Angelichio, whoever it is – that they can trust him coming into a game and saving a season for a game or two, if needed to be. And that’s the bottom line here. If you’re going all in with this season, and they’ve already proven that they are, you have to cover your rear end with a 42, 43-year-old quarterback.
“Unless Will Howard makes a jump that I wouldn’t expect, I would feel a lot better if Will Howard had all of training camp last year, all of preseason last year, and the majority of the regular season practices,” Kaboly added. “I think he’d be in a much better opportunity.”
That is the crux of the situation. The Steelers have put, if not every single egg, darn near the full chicken coop’s worth of eggs in the basket of 2026. That’s why they brought Aaron Rodgers back for one final year. They feel like they can win in both the regular season and the playoffs with Rodgers at the helm of Mike McCarthy’s offense. If he misses time, which he did last year, who do you feel better turning to at this point?
Will Howard hasn’t taken a single preseason snap, much less a regular-season snap. Mason Rudolph has won games in the NFL. He’s already made a good impression on McCarthy with how he’s responding to coaching and with his arm velocity.
It’s easy to understand why people like Kaboly feel that Mason Rudolph will be the backup quarterback to start the season. However, there is a path for that to change. It just depends on how Will Howard performs against other teams, even against vanilla defenses in the preseason. Will he impress the decision-makers like McCarthy, quarterbacks coach Tom Arth and offensive coordinator Brian Angelichio?
If not, get ready for Mason Rudolph to be firmly secured in the QB2 spot on the weekly depth chart.