Ben Roethlisberger Thinks Steelers Can’t Go Back to Mitch Trubisky

Mitch Trubisky had another dreadful outing in the Steelers’ 30-13 loss to the Indianapolis Colts on Saturday at Lucas Oil Stadium. He completed 16 of 23 passes (69.6%) for 169 yards with one touchdown, two interceptions, and a quarterback rating of 68.9. After his second interception late in the fourth quarter, Mike Tomlin benched Trubisky and replaced him with Mason Rudolph for the final two minutes.

The Steelers are 7-2 this season when Kenny Pickett starts and finishes a game. They’re 0-5 when he doesn’t. They’ve got nothing from Trubisky, and a quarterback change might give the Steelers’ ailing offense a spark. Even former Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger thinks there’s no way Pittsburgh can go back to Trubisky.

“So next week, if Kenny is back, I think it will be Kenny. But I think they’ll have to go to Mason. You’re not going back to Mitch,” Roethlisberger said on his Footbhalin podcast livestream after Trubisky got benched.

Pickett is pushing to return from his ankle injury in a Week 16 return against the Cincinnati Bengals but Week 17 against the Seattle Seahawks is more realistic, according to a report by Ian Rapoport of NFL Network.

Tomlin said he was unsure after the game when asked if Trubisky will be the starter against the Cincinnati Bengals next Saturday.

“I don’t have answers as I sit here right now,” Tomlin said. “I know that we’d better do some things differently. We’d better approach some things differently. We’re not going to roll that ball out there like that next week.”

Asked specifically about the play of Trubisky, Tomlin said “none of us were good enough, starting first and foremost with myself.”

Tomlin hasn’t benched a quarterback in-game at any point this season. He gave a minimal explanation for doing so at such a late hour in this contest.

“We didn’t do enough of anything well today,” he said.

Tomlin doubled down on promising changes, though he continued to be vague on what kind of changes those might be.

“We’re not going to keep doing the same things that we’re doing and expect or hope for a different result,” he said. “We’ve got a seven-day turnaround. We’ll see what those seven days hold for us. … Everything is on the table at this juncture. We can’t play football like that.”