CINCINNATI -- So, Devlin Hodges, how about that 79-yard touchdown pass to James Washington?
You know, the one right after you'd been summoned from the sideline in the second half with your Steelers in genuine danger of losing to the NFL's last winless team?
The one that might well have cemented a starting spot for the rest of the season for a 23-year-old undrafted rookie out of something called Samford University who showed up at Saint Vincent as a fourth-string snap-eater?
The one that ... oh, just watch:
So yeah, I asked what's above, albeit in not so many words. And this was the totality of the young man's response: "James had a post, and I threw to him. I knew I couldn't throw it deeper than I wanted to. I had to kind of pull it down. After the catch, James made a couple guys miss and scored. It was pretty awesome. It's a pretty electric feeling."
Uh-huh ... now watch this, too, to see what constitutes electricity for this young man:
If that's electric, then Nikola Tesla's got a lot of explaining to do.
But that's Duck. And you might as well call him Duck since he once referred to himself that way -- if not in the third person then in the third animal -- from behind the podium in Paul Brown Stadium's press conference room Sunday evening. At that point, after a small exhale and a glance around at all the cameras and microphones, he behaved as if he'd been part of such settings all his life. Whereas a couple minutes earlier, back in the locker room, he'd been approached at his stall by Burt Lauten, the Steelers' media relations czar, who'd let him know he'd soon be ushered over to that podium, where only the most in-demand interviews go. And rather than dressing up to the nines, as almost all of his positional peers do in the NFL, he one-handed a gray hoodie, whisked it over his head, then topped it off with a toque.
"OK, where to?" he asked Lauten.
Next came my question and others, all fielded with a yo-dude style that so stirringly resembles that of the Jesse Pinkman meth-lab-junkie character on the TV masterpiece 'Breaking Bad,' I half-expected him to start addressing us all as 'Mr. White.'
What did it mean to Hodges to strike so quickly?
"I didn't think the third play I was in, I'd be throwing a 79-yard touchdown," he'd answer. "But if I could go back and do it again, it'd be pretty cool."
What went through his head when Mike Tomlin told him to enter the game?
"It was just, 'Go in and do your thing.' I knew I was ready. I was prepared. Just go out there and play football."
How much had it helped that he'd already made that one emergency start in L.A.?
"I think, obviously, everyone around the locker room gained a lot of confidence in me, knowing that, hey, if Duck goes in again, he can get the job done. I think I proved that."
Duck. Third animal.
Or spirit animal?
____________________
Duck needs to be the Steelers' quarterback right now.
And I've zero doubt he will be.
No, Tomlin wouldn't come close to committing between Hodges and Mason Rudolph to face the Browns next weekend, even after he'd benched the latter and set the stage for the former to beat the Bengals, 16-10, on this Sunday afternoon. But it'd be beyond unconscionable for this coach, stubborn as he can be, to turn his back on these two critical principles in organized sport, both achieved here as soon as Hodges was activated:
1. Believe you can win.
2. Win.
Duck's got his shortcomings, not least of which is that he's short for what he does, 4 full inches shorter than Rudolph or Ben Roethlisberger, both 6-5. But it's not like he has cause to lack belief in his ability. While at Samford, an FCS school in Alabama, he won the Walter Payton Award, akin to the Heisman at his level, and threw for 4,283 yards and 32 touchdowns as a senior. That was mere months ago.
As he's put it a ton of times since his arrival and did again here, "Just go out there and play football," because the game is still the game.
Maybe he was underestimated. Maybe he's just too naive to fathom that he might not belong.
This is my point: It doesn't matter. Not now.
Only this does:
Five games remain. The Steelers are 6-5. If the season ended today, incredibly given their countless crippling circumstances, they would be an AFC Wild Card entrant. But the season doesn't end today. And all the rancid records of all those remaining opponents not named the Bills and Ravens no longer mean a thing, seeing as how they barely escaped this one.
That's why Tomlin acted as he did and when he did.
Rudolph was brutal in the first half, and that's being kind. He was flat-footed, failing to find the open man, flailing errantly once he did. His statistics -- 8 of 16, 85 yards and a goal-line pick into quadruple-coverage -- are dismal but still don't describe it adequately in that the Bengals were clearly willing to concede so much more. And because of that, unlike previous games, all the excuses, legit or not, were obliterated.
I asked Rudolph what he felt he needed to do better, and I wasn't crazy about his reply:
"I've just gotta come out ... we've gotta come out faster, start faster as an offense," he'd say, switching from the singular to the plural in midstream, then right back: "I think that starts with me. So, yeah, I've gotta make some adjustments. But I think it's correctable stuff."
Sorry, no, it was worse than that:
And on this occasion, it wasn't as collective as it'd been. Worse, I dare say, his sunken confidence seemed to carry over to those around him.
Not a word was spoken to Rudolph or Hodges during halftime, as both confirmed. And Tomlin was adamant afterward he didn't approach the game as a whole with any short leash on Rudolph, even after he'd also performed poorly in Cleveland.
“I don’t prepare for failure in that way. I don’t. I prepare for success," he'd elegantly elaborate when asked about any short leash. "Like you guys hear me say all the time, I’ve always got a hardcore plan, but I’m light on my feet in case adjustments are necessary in any element of play. We did what we thought was necessary to win this game.”
That stance took one additional offensive series in the second half to cement. Rudolph took a sluggish sack for a 13-yard loss and, after a handoff, hideously underthrew an open Diontae Johnson across the middle.
That was it. That had to be it, as I'd mentioned seconds later.
Seriously, this isn't the hill to die on. How much more? #DKPS #Steelers #Bengals #HereWeGo #SeizeTheDey #PITvsCIN
— Dejan Kovacevic (@Dejan_Kovacevic) November 24, 2019
Yep. The first one over to Rudolph was Randy Fichtner with word that he was done, followed soon by Tomlin.
"I just saw enough of what I needed to see and thought we needed a spark," Tomlin would say.
And once Hodges grabbed a helmet and got to flicking warmup balls to Nick Vannett, then took the field to a somewhat jarring roar from the black-and-gold portion of the 47,233 on hand -- they'd been awfully quiet until then -- the hill become one to climb:
If Duck were to lead this offense 83 yards down the field right now, should the statue be bronze or marble? #DKPS #Steelers #Bengals #HereWeGo #SeizeTheDey #PITvsCIN
— Dejan Kovacevic (@Dejan_Kovacevic) November 24, 2019
No sooner did I hit send on that tweet than Hodges dug deep: He fed Jaylen Samuels on a clean crossing pattern for 11 yards and, after a 3-yard run by Benny Snell and a push-off pass interference called against Washington, he and Washington hooked up again for the big six.
A double-dose of humility accompanied that, as well.
On the receiving end, Washington downplayed his repulsor-ray stiff-arm of an off-balance B.W. Webb:
"You know, I tried to use Vance McDonald's move," Washington offered with a big grin, referencing the stiff-arm of 2018 on the Buccaneers' Chris Conte in Tampa, Fla. "It wasn't as good as his, but it still worked out."
It was good enough to plant Webb on his posterior a dozen yards down the field.
On the passing end, all Hodges would add of the play beyond his answer to me was that Washington was his primary target, saying, “Yeah, that was part of my first read. It was there, and I just let it rip.”
Well, no. He did more. Because, as Washington would reveal, though he was the target, he had to alter the route.
"I had a post-corner and got out," he said. "Duck adjusted the throw and threw it across for me. I just happened to make the rest happen."
That's instinct. That's just going out there and playing football.
But that's also confidence. It's comfort level. And it was nothing, nothing, nothing like what we were witnessing from Rudolph.
Hodges was far from perfect, so don't let the narrative trump reality. He completed 3 of 9 passes for 28 yards the rest of the way, with the offense quagmiring all over again. Like Roethlisberger and Rudolph, he was rushed from the pocket, his receivers ran uninspired routes, and the running game offered scant support. Funny, how changing quarterbacks can't compensate for Tevin Jones as JuJu Smith-Schuster, Kerrith Whyte as James Conner, and B.J. Finney as Maurkice Pouncey.
That should serve as a painful reminder to all concerned.
"It's a bigger issue. It's been a bigger issue all along," David DeCastro told me. "I know quarterback's the position everyone watches, but we've all got to take pride in our game and get better down the stretch."
"We have a lot of work to do, all of us," Alejandro Villanueva essentially echoed from the next stall. "Things are challenging, for sure."
They are. But there's a colossal difference between envisioning a challenge versus eyeing the impossible. So even if all else is equal between Rudolph and Hodges -- and I'm far from certain it is -- then the tiebreaker here has to be ... well, electricity. Or energy. Or whatever other intangibles might course through the process by having a confident quarterback.
The players, as one might expect, weren't about to take sides. Not on the record and not off it.
Still, I found this at least a little telling from Ramon Foster in recalling Hodges' first entry to the huddle: "He comes in like a little kid, man. He comes in with an opportunist mindset. He knows that one play can solidify your career in the NFL. It was fun to see him take advantage of it."
Fun.
Don't think Tomlin doesn't sense this. His most vicious critics will concede he knows how to push his players, and he watched this, too.
So, as much as we'll parse every syllable he speaks on this subject between now and when the ball flies at 1:02 p.m. next Sunday at Heinz Field, I wouldn't spare a second thought on it.
But hey, good luck with the scraps he already threw our way.
On who'll start against Cleveland: "We’ll see what next week holds next week. But I like the contributions of Duck. I like his readiness. I appreciate the efforts of Mason, and also appreciate the support of Mason after we made the change.”
On what's gone wrong with Rudolph: “I'm not going to speculate."
On whether Hodges brought that "spark" he'd sought: “It’s football. We’re not going to read too much into it. He made some plays, but you can’t take anything away from James Washington, with what he did to produce that play after the catch. You’ll make more out of Duck’s contributions than need be, but so be it. It comes with the position. They get too much credit at times, and they get too much blame at times.”
And the money line, on when he hopes to make his decision: “I may have it as I stand here right now, but I’m just not going to share it with you guys.”
See?
Don't buy what he's selling. He knows.
____________________
"I've got a challenge in front of me. I know that."
This was what Rudolph told me way back in June at OTAs. And the challenge before him was beating out Josh Dobbs to be backup quarterback.
Feels funny now, huh?
All that's happened since, of course, is that Roethlisberger went down in Week 2, Rudolph was rushed into duty against an undefeated opponent in San Francisco, he was cheap-shotted into unconsciousness by the Ravens' Earl Thomas, the cart that should have carried him blew a gasket, he was picked off four times in Cleveland, he had the Browns' Myles Garrett rip of his helmet and ram him with it over the head and, finally, he heard Garrett formally accuse him in a league hearing of making a racist remark, conveniently, a week after the fact.
Turned out Rudolph was more on the money with his initial "cowardly" assessment of Garrett than he might have known.
Then there was this, Sunday morning in Cleveland:
Cleveland’s newest game: Mason Rudolph piñata. pic.twitter.com/qxst1rSwzS
— clevelanddotcom (@clevelanddotcom) November 24, 2019
Being beaten up is bad. Being beaten up in effigy is a special kind of bad.
Wait, one more: After the Browns beat the Dolphins, 41-24, the piling-on kept coming. Sheldon Richardson, a defensive tackle, was informed Rudolph had been benched in Cincinnati and was asked by a reporter how he felt about maybe not facing him next weekend.
“I don’t really care, bro,” Richardson came back. “I hope he plays. I hope he plays. Did you see him last game?”
Ow.
It's reasonable to weigh all of the above. We've seen the physical issues, and we can only imagine the mental.
Asked after this game if there was anything he'd said to Garrett that could have been interpreted in any way as race-based, Rudolph stated emphatically, "Absolutely not. There's nothing. Not even close."
In virtually the same breath, though, he acknowledged he was distraught over it the day he heard.
"I think any human would be in one day, when your integrity's attacked and something's said about you that's totally untrue. And I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe that he would go that route after the fact. But it is what it is. I think I've moved on, and ... for one day, it was tough."
Tomlin said of Rudolph without expanding, “It was a tough week for him on a lot of levels," but Rudolph rejected that any aspect of the Cleveland mess might have brought about his benching.
"No, I think I do a good job of shutting that stuff out," he said. "This was purely about not moving the ball up and down the field."
I believe him. Every syllable of it.
I don't know what I believe about Rudolph as a quarterback, but he's 24. His future remains unwritten. And he'll be neither the first nor the last athlete to suffer a crisis in confidence before overcoming it.
Washington, his old Oklahoma State teammate and best friend in this room, observed of Rudolph's benching, "That would be hard on anyone. As teammates, we’re here for him. We still have faith in him 100 percent. He’s still our guy. Whatever he needs, we’re here for him."
Other players expressed a hope that "people don't pit one against the other," as Foster told me, "because it's up to all of us to get through this together."
All fair. But an offense in crisis mode can't mesh well with a crisis in confidence at quarterback. For only one of these two, everything's just ducky right now.
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
Steelers at Bengals, Cincinnati, Nov. 24, 2019 -- MATT SUNDAY / DKPS