Confidence always came easy to Mason Rudolph.
Setting records wherever he happened to throw a football — be it growing up in South Carolina or at Oklahoma State — helped.
Then came 2019. And chaos. Ten wildly uneven games while filling in for the injured Ben Roethlisberger.
A concussion that left the indelible image of Rudolph being carried off the field on a stretcher with his facemask removed. A brawl with Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett and all the madness that came after.
It was humbling to be sure. Yet nothing prepared Rudolph for what happened last spring when he became an unrestricted free agent and the phone didn’t ring.
The prospect of moving on with his life and pursuing a commercial real estate license became not some fuzzy far-off notion but tangible. And for a brief period … seemingly unavoidable.
In those moments, the breezy self-assuredness that Rudolph has carried around like so much armor gave way to uncertainty.
An uncertainty that didn’t really leave even after the Steelers offered him a one-year deal to come back as the third stringer behind Kenny Pickett and Mitch Trubisky.
Sure, Rudolph put on a brave face. Said the right things. Did the right things. Didn’t feel sorry for himself or let his pride get in the way of doing his job of directing the scout team during practice knowing on game days he was going to be the emergency third quarterback.
Internally, however, the struggle was real.
