Will Howard isn’t supposed to sniff the field as a rookie. He’s expected to be the No. 3 quarterback, hold a clipboard and absorb all he can behind Mason Rudolph and, likely, Aaron Rodgers. If Howard enters the lineup, something has gone wrong. Very wrong.
But it’s the NFL. Little goes as planned. As the league has consistently shown, a handful of teams each year have to turn to second, third, and even fourth-string quarterbacks. Put the numbers to the test. Since the NFL expanded to a 17-game schedule in 2021, here’s the number of quarterbacks who started at least one game league-wide and the number who started for the Steelers.