When the Steelers visit the Broncos on Sunday, Pittsburgh coach Mike Tomlin will get another crack at a rookie quarterback. It’ll be Tomlin’s 31st career game against a first-year signal-caller.
The victim this time around will be Bo Nix, the 12th overall pick in the 2024 draft.
Tomlin’s record is 24-6 against rookie QBs. Earlier this week, Myles Simmons and I tried to guess the six that beat Tomlin based only on the years of the losses.
As the attached clip indicates, our effort was not too good.
If you’d like to try it for yourself, here are the years when Tomlin lost to a rookie quarterback: 2023 twice, 2016 twice, 2012, and 2007.
Here’s a paragraph of filler, so that your eyes won’t stray to the answers.
And here’s another.
It happened twice last year. The Steelers were overpowered in Week 4 by C.J. Stroud and the Texans, 30-6. Then, they lost to the Browns and Dorian Thompson-Robinson(!) in Week 11, 13-10.
In 2016, there were two more losses to rookie quarterbacks. Carson Wentz and the Eagles dismantled the Steelers in Week 3, 34-3. In Week 10, Dak Prescott and the Cowboys beat the Steelers in Pittsburgh, 35-30.
Four years earlier, it was Brandon Weeden(!) and the Browns, Week 12 at Cleveland, 20-14. Five years before that, it was Troy Smith(!) and the Ravens in Week 17, 27-21.
Half of the losses came against quarterbacks for the new Browns/old Browns. And the quarterbacks in question didn’t exactly go on to have Hall of Fame careers. (DTR still could. Theoretically.)
Tomorrow, Nix will get a chance to drop Tomlin’s success rate against rookie quarterbacks below 80 percent. Based on how the Pittsburgh defense played in Atlanta, good luck with that.
