Mitch Trubisky took it in the teeth last Thursday, both from the New England Patriots and the crowd of Steelers faithful at Acrisure Stadium.
But he continued to play on, even if it wasn’t good. Though he stumbled, he didn’t crumble — through getting booed and hearing chants for your backup.
“That dude fought through. They were booing him and chanting Mason Rudolph,” former Steelers running back Merril Hoge said on the DVE Morning Show on Wednesday.
Though he didn’t persevere, Hoge respects Trubisky’s attitude.
“The way he played and fought through that. I have enormous respect for him. I do. He showed me something from a character perspective and a mental perspective that I was like, I mean, a lot of people in that position would’ve crumbled.”
Even for the interception, Hoge doesn’t blame Trubisky but targeted tight end Pat Freiermuth.
“The pick that Trubisky threw … Freiermuth makes a move and just quits. He’s supposed to break it inside and he just quits. … He stopped and backpedaled. I’ve never seen a route like that. And there would be no reason to do that based on the coverage that they were playing. He should have been where the ball was. I’m just telling you that.”
Hoge said he didn’t like Trubisky as a first-round draft pick, stating that nothing would tell any team that he was that caliber of a quarterback. “If you studied him in college, he has the exact same things today that he had in college, and they’ve never changed, they’ve only gotten worse, they’ve been magnified.”
Still, Hoge credited his leadership skills for not throwing Freiermuth under the bus. “His job is to throw it, and when you lose, it is about you. It’s not about other people. And he followed that model perfectly, but the way he played throughout that game, I was like, that kid deserves a lot of credit because he was getting, I mean, beat up.”
Trubisky needs to play strong and sound football and use that teeth-kicking as fuel against the Indianapolis Colts. Because if he doesn’t, the Steelers are in even more trouble as the 2023 regular season winds down.
