Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger opened up about his true feelings for quarterback Mason Rudolph after the public perceived the two as having an ongoing feud.
When Rudolph was drafted, Roethlisberger questioned the selection, stating he thought they could have landed other good players that would help the team in the immediate rather than the future.
“I thought that maybe in the third round, you know you can get some really good football players that can help this team now,” Roethlisberger said in 2018.
Roethlisberger says it was no shot at Rudolph, who he now roots for, and he would have said the same thing if the team had drafted a center. It was a problem with the pick, not the player.
“When they drafted Mason, I made comments about, and I don’t remember my comments, but it was like, why did we draft Mason? It wasn’t a shot at Mason. I didn’t have a problem with Mason,” Roethlisberger said on his ‘Footbahlin’ podcast. “They could have drafted Patrick Mahomes, whoever, it wasn’t a shot at the person. It was how are we making our team better by drafting a guy in the third round.”
Since then, Rudolph has spent most of his career with the Steelers. He signed a one-year deal with the Titans last year after spending his first six seasons with the Steelers, but is now returning for his seventh season with the team and is currently the top quarterback on the depth chart.
Rudolph has remarked that he did not have a great mentor in the NFL, which seemed to be a line about Roethlisberger, but he stated there was no bad blood.
“I don’t take it for granted, there’s not many players that can come in and learn from a Hall of Fame quarterback,” Rudolph said on the Steel Here podcast in May 2023. “He was a guy I watched, one of my favorites through college and so being at it for 18 years, he had a mode of operation, his preparation, he sort of prepared independently. I wouldn’t say we were close but he did his job. He had a job to do, he has a team to lead. And I get that. There were plenty of times he would answer questions I had.”
The Steelers will bank on Rudolph, likely being their starter if Aaron Rodgers does not sign, and Roethlisberger has endorsed Rudolph in the last few weeks as well.