Pittsburgh Steelers’ followers love rookie quarterback Will Howard. There’s loads to love. However the group isn’t handing him the No. 3 job. Identical to his days at Kansas State, he’s battling Skylar Thompsons for reps, a job, and a job.
Appropriately, frankly. Howard, proficient as he’s, is a sixth-round rookie. Nobody in his footwear ought to be given something. Pittsburgh has an atypical “fourth-string” challenger in Skylar Thompson. Usually, that fourth quarterback is an undrafted free agent with little likelihood. Final 12 months, John Rhys Plumlee. Previous years, Tanner Morgan, Brynn Renner, and John Parker Wilson occupied these footwear. Even a draft decide like Chris Oladokun obtained squeezed out.
Thompson isn’t that. He has almost 150 common season cross makes an attempt, three common season begins, and began a playoff recreation for the Miami Dolphins in 2022. If there’s any wide-eyed rookie attempting to digest all of it, it’s Howard and never Thompson, although Howard is displaying poise past a first-year participant.
Throughout the 11-on-11 workforce intervals, three teams filter in: first-team, second-team, and third-team. A fourth-string quarterback is normally frozen out, particularly within the post-Ben Roethlisberger period. Now not is a veteran receiving half or off-days to create probabilities for the fourth-stringer to bump up a rung. Nor are there accidents as there was final season, Russell Wilson restricted for many of camp that gave Plumlee additional reps.
Thus far, there isn’t a real No. 4. As an alternative, co-chairs of the No. 3 spot. Howard and Thompson have nearly-evenly break up reps through the workforce intervals. Right here’s how the reps have been divided up.
Group Interval Reps (12 whole snaps)
1. Performs 1-4: Aaron Rodgers
2. Performs 5-8: Mason Rudolph
3. Performs 9-12: Two for Will Howard, two for Skylar Thompson
Who goes in first rotates, too. For instance, throughout yesterday’s follow, Thompson took the preliminary third-string reps of workforce interval. The subsequent interval, Howard entered first adopted by Thompson.
The one space Howard has seemingly had a bonus is in seven pictures, snagging the reps over Thompson within the truncated seven-play session. However even that has been squeezed out by back-to-back days of a tiebreaker, a 3-3 impasse between the offense scoring and the protection stopping heading into the ultimate rep. For the previous a number of years, Mike Tomlin has introduced the 1’s again on the sector to find out the winner (and if historical past is any indication, who’s consuming good post-practice). That leaves Howard brief a rep he’d in any other case obtain.
Already, Howard has an enormous fan membership. It’s simple to be rankled on the considered reps being disadvantaged. But when he’s as proficient as perceived, Howard will dispatch Thompson by summer time’s finish. Via three practices, Howard has appeared stronger of the 2. The margin isn’t drastic, pattern sizes for each are small, however Howard’s performed cleaner and been extra aggressive downfield whereas displaying contact and layering on his throws that have been amongst his most spectacular school traits.
For now, each are getting probabilities to indicate their new groups what they’ll do. That’s the spirit of competitors and the best approach for Pittsburgh to deal with issues.
