It might be over for our sweet prince. The Will Howard roster spot conversation was supposed to get answered Friday night, and it did, just not the way anybody in Pittsburgh wanted.
The Steelers gave Howard every single thing a fan would have asked for on his behalf. The start. The entire first half. The starters around him, at least until Mike McCarthy began rotating offensive linemen to see what fit. Aaron Rodgers inactive. Mason Rudolph inactive. That is the cleanest runway a sixth round quarterback is ever going to get, and the Jets still walked out of Acrisure Stadium with a 17-0 win.
Ten of fifteen. Seventy four yards. Two picks. Nothing on the scoreboard.
The Play That Follows Him to Cutdown Day
Howard had a drive going in the second quarter. Third and eight, blitz coming, he slid off the rush, climbed the pocket and found Ben Skowronek for sixteen. That is the exact rep the coaching staff has been asking about all camp, the one where the pressure shows up and the quarterback stays a quarterback.
A few snaps later he went to Roman Wilson and Andre Cisco was already sitting on it. Cisco caught it and took off into open grass, and the guy who eventually ran him down and made the tackle was Will Howard.
Sit with that image for a second. Your quarterback is the last line of defense on his own audition tape.
Then it happened again. Late in the first half, another drive that was actually working, past the Jets 40 with the two minute warning behind them, and Howard went back to Wilson. Samuel Womack III undercut it. Two possessions that looked like proof, both of them ending with a guy in green holding the football.
“The performance wasn’t up to par,” Howard said afterward. “Obviously, the little details, it’s a shame because those were both good drives and I felt like we were moving the ball really well.”
He is right about all of it, which somehow makes it worse.
Everybody Was Bad, and It Did Not Cost Everybody the Same
Nobody in black and gold gets to feel good about this one. Geno Smith opened the night 7 for 7 on a 69 yard touchdown drive against a Steelers defense playing without T.J. Watt, Cam Heyward, Joey Porter Jr., Jalen Ramsey and Jaquan Brisker. The run game scraped out 98 yards on 26 carries. Drew Allar took the second half and went 11 of 23 for 110 with three sacks and nothing to show for it either. Four quarters, zero points, and McCarthy chalked it up to the detail and execution dropping off from eight days earlier.
Here is the difference. Rodgers is the starter. Allar is a rookie draft pick who threw for 154 yards and accounted for three touchdowns against Green Bay, and teams do not spend that kind of pick on a quarterback and then release him in August. Rudolph went 10 of 11 in the opener, and McCarthy stood at a podium Wednesday and said he saw what he needed to see from Mason.
Rudolph won that job in street clothes. Howard was the only man in the building being evaluated Friday night, and he is the one who left it with two interceptions and a tackle.
Why the Will Howard Roster Spot Is Not a Practice Squad Problem
The comfortable thing every Steelers fan is telling themselves right now is that Pittsburgh will just stash him on the practice squad. That sounds like a soft landing until you remember how a player actually gets to a practice squad.
He has to be waived first. That means putting the offensive MVP of a national championship game on the wire and asking all 31 other teams to look him over and shrug. A quarterback who went 7 of 9 and drove the two minute offense 80 yards eight days ago. A quarterback whose entire NFL résumé is two preseason games, because a broken bone in his hand erased his rookie season before it began.
