It’s deer season here in the heart of West Virginia, but it’s Duck Season in Pittsburgh.
Coach Mike Tomlin announced Tuesday that Devlin “Duck” Hodges would be his starting quarterback in the return match versus Cleveland this week, and the Duck call was the only one he could’ve made, really. Hodges gave the team a nice spark Sunday against Cincinnati, just enough for the Steelers to avoid the upset against the hapless Bengals after Rudolph looked simply awful.
An undrafted free agent from Samford, Hodges has the edge right now because he’s playing with more confidence and decisiveness. The Duck can chuck, while Mason Rudolph has been consistently hesitant to rifle the ball downfield. The Steelers receivers are average at best, and the O-line has been a sorry slop of a unit with its run-blocking, so the Steelers simply have to pitch it downfield to open up the defense and create some running lanes. Pittsburgh’s talent level has been decimated by injuries, so the playbook absolutely has to be wide open.
The Steelers have a lot more capital invested in Rudolph, a third-round draft pick two years ago, and certainly won’t give up on him. But his pocket presence is virtually non-existent — and to be fair, the pocket has been virtually non-existent, too. The offensive line’s decline this year has been remarkable.
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Rudolph would’ve also carried into this one the burden of the media’s guileful glare. I’ve stayed away from the Myles Garrett-Mason Rudolph scrap because it’s already been “beat to death,” so to speak. But when Garrett played the race card a week after the brawl — an egregiously awful accusation that was substantiated by nobody and shot down by the NFL’s investigation — Rudolph became an unwitting target. The announcers wouldn’t let it die in Cincinnati, despite the fact that the game they were paid to cover was unfolding before their eyes. It’s a media-made distraction, but it’s real and won’t begin to fade until after this week.
Meantime, Hodges gives the team its best chance to win this week. The Steelers need a playmaker at QB, somebody with the mettle to make mayhem and see where it goes.
“There’s going to be enough pressure on Devlin just performing,” Tomlin said at his weekly press conference Tuesday, “so I’m not going to add to it by talking about expectations. I expect him not to kill us.”
Here comes McBride …
All throughout the fall, the West Virginia University coaching staff was singing the praises of its precocious freshman guard from Cincinnati, Miles McBride. Last night in the semifinals of the Cancun Classic, Mountaineer fans found out why.
The 6-2 slinger pulled WVU back from a 15-point, second-half deficit as the Mountaineers trimmed Northern Iowa 60-55 in a battle of early-season unbeatens. WVU gets Wichita State tonight in the finals.
McBride was sensational, hitting an array of mid-range jumpers and running floaters, dishing off five assists, with two blocked shots to avoid the upset. McBride, who had just four points on eight minutes of play in the first half, finished with 18 points and was at his best during a decisive 18-4 run.
Mountaineer fans have been grumbling that their young squad, now 5-0, hasn’t gotten much respect nation-wide. But I’m betting Coach Bob Huggins isn’t worried about his team getting zero votes in the recent AP poll. The Mountaineers need to get their act together and find the right combination of players. Their wildly talented Twin Towers, Oscar Tshiebwe and Derek Culver, haven’t figured out how to play together at the same time, and there are other serious flaws on offense. The players don’t move well without the ball — honestly, isn’t this an ongoing issue under Huggins? — and a routine entry pass to the low post is a true burden.
The first half was so vile offensively, I was glad it was the late game so as not to frighten the young folks. There were so many bricks tossed up, Trump can now finish the wall and make Cancun pay for it.
But if McBride can help Jermaine Haley and Emmitt Matthews create in the open court, and if Sean McNeil can develop into a true marksman from the arc, WVU could blossom into a formidable group. I’d trust a guy with 861 career wins to figure it out.
