After arriving at Rooney Sports Complex, addressing the media and going through the Steelers' initial OTA practice, Ben Roethlisberger hasn't been back on the field since, leaving an interesting dynamic in place for the team's other quarterbacks.
It wasn't all that long ago Landry Jones was the wide-eyed rookie searching for every nugget of information he could learn from Roethlisberger and Bruce Gradkowski. Now, he's the one doling out advice to rookie Mason Rudolph and second-year quarterback Josh Dobbs without Roethlisberger around.
"They'll come to me," Jones said Wednesday after the Steelers completed their fifth of 10 OTA sessions. "I don't know Mason well enough yet to give him a whole lot. I don't know if he's the type of guy who wants a bunch of information or if he's a guy who just wants to go out there and play. We're just kind of feeling each other out. I'll give him something here or there. At this point, we're just trying to get to know each other more than anything else."
That process is continuing throughout these OTA sessions. And with Roethlisberger taking the days off, Jones is the one running the first-team offense.
It's something he's not totally unaccustomed to doing. Now entering his sixth NFL season, Jones has appeared in 19 NFL games, with all but one coming in the past three seasons. He's also made five starts, winning three of them, showing his teammates he can fill in for Roethlisberger if needed.
But there's a different dynamic involved with making a spot start and running the offense in OTA practices as the most veteran quarterback on the field.
"Yeah, backup quarterback is just a weird, weird position," Jones admitted. "You're a leader, but not really until you have to be. So you're more in the background more than anything. And then on days like today, you have to move into that role. It's an odd thing. Most of the time, you don't want to be seen or heard, and then once Ben's not here, you have to be seen and heard."
When Jones has been seen and heard on the field during the regular season, it's largely been pretty good. Last season, for example, he completed 23 of 28 passes for 239 yards with one touchdown and one interception for a passer rating of 99.3.
Jones' career passer rating is a solid 86.2 on 169 career pass attempts. Yet some fans can't seem to get past the early preseason performances in his career when he struggled through the learning process while working with fifth- and sixth-team players.
With Roethlisberger now 36, the Steelers seem more intent than ever on bringing in young quarterbacks to try to prepare for the eventual process of replacing their franchise quarterback. But the immediate impact of that might be felt on the back end of the roster more so than on Roethlisberger, despite his immediate questioning of the team's selection of Rudolph this year in the third round.
“(Dobbs) and Landry are the two guys I felt the worst for," Roethlisberger told 93.7-The Fan a week after the Steelers selected Rudolph. "I’ll be honest, I wasn’t worried about him coming and taking my job. I feel confident that I can go out and beat whoever I need to beat out for my job; that’s just the confidence that I have in myself.
"I do feel bad for those guys. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I assume Landry is still the 2, (but) I don’t really know. And Josh, same thing. Last year, taken in the fourth round. Does that mean that the Steelers screwed up with that pick? Do they think that he wasn't not the one that they thought or that he hasn’t developed the way they thought? Why else would you take a quarterback in the third round the next year?"
Roethlisberger has since backed away from those comments, saying they were "taken out of context." But Jones has taken the addition of a young quarterback much in the same way he did last year when Dobbs was selected in the fourth round.
The Steelers figure to keep only three quarterbacks on their final roster -- though they did keep four in 1995 -- meaning someone is unlikely to be here at the end of August. It's a challenge, but that's part of life in the NFL.
"It's like any position. There's a guy coming in every year trying to take your job," he said. "It's no different. It is what it is. It's part of the business.
"I'm not going to be a jerk. I'm not going to not talk to you or not say anything. If he's got questions, I've got no problem (answering). That's what (Gradkowski) helped me out with, that type of stuff. He kind of set the example there. I'm not going to withhold anything from the young guy."
I asked him if that's just part of becoming more mature at 29 and comfortable in his own skin now six years into his career.
"I guess," he said with his usual smile.