Mark Madden's Hot Take: Steelers' starting quarterback job is not a 3-way competition

Here are the big issues at the Pittsburgh Steelers’ ongoing series of OTAs:

There are none.

OTAs are totally unnecessary. Minicamp is totally unnecessary. The process should start with training camp, not before.

Baseball, basketball and hockey don’t have OTAs and minicamp. Football does in the attempt to be complicated and important, to keep watch on potential miscreants and to feed the 24/7/365 media buzz.

Those football players who skip anything optional are the ones to be respected most. Troy Polamalu usually did, and he did OK.

Mason Rudolph should have skipped OTAs. In fact, he should skip right on out of Pittsburgh.

Rudolph doesn’t deserve any better in terms of football. He isn’t very good. It’s laughable to say Rudolph deserves any better in terms of truth given his sport’s abject and constant dishonesty.

But Rudolph has absorbed a steady barrage of cow flop since last season ended.

Ex-GM Kevin Colbert said Rudolph was penciled in as the starter for 2022.

Then the Steelers signed Mitch Trubisky. Then the Steelers drafted Kenny Pickett.

That pencil clearly came with an eraser.

But still coach Mike Tomlin characterizes the fight for the Steelers’ starting QB job as a three-way dance involving Rudolph.

That is a whopper of a lie, right up there with “the check’s in the mail” and the Munich Agreement.

Rudolph won’t be the starting quarterback when training camp ends. Chances are that Rudolph won’t even be employed by the Steelers.

But in the forgiving, false light of OTAs, Rudolph is a contender.

Perhaps that’s the romance of unnecessary football.