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Steelers End Of Season Player Exit Meetings – QB Bruce Gradkowski

By Matthew Marczi

Posted on February 19, 2014 at 8:00 am

By Matthew Marczi

End-of-season player exit meetings are not something that we are often privy to as outsiders of the football world. Generally, we only get a glimpse into that world when a player is asked by a reporter how the meeting went, if the player is willing to discuss it.

Still, it’s not generally a hard concept to grasp, and we have a pretty good feel by now of how Mike Tomlin and his staff likes to operate, and we see all the game film, so it’s not an overly difficult project to simulate. If we were to administer the end-of-season player exit meetings, it might go something like this.

Player: Bruce Gradkowski

Position: Quarterback

Experience: 8 Years

Bruce Gradkowski had the best season a backup quarterback has had with the Pittsburgh Steelers since Ben Roethlisberger was drafted in 2004. Roethlisberger himself was the backup to begin that season, and ended up putting together a pretty respectable season in his own right. But Gradkowski’s season is what you want to see from your backup.

And that’s because he didn’t play a single snap, despite dressing for every game.

When you are a team that has an unquestioned franchise quarterback, that is the ideal scenario, to have a backup that never has to take a snap. And in fact, this was the first year in his eight-year career in which Gradkowski wasn’t asked to toss at least 11 passes.

Gradkowski had made 20 starts in his career, and appeared in at least two games in every year until this past season. For the Steelers’ sake, that new trend will continue for the duration of his stay with the organization.

Because naturally, that meant Roethlisberger was able to get through an entire season in good health. Given that that happened only once in his 10-year career, six years ago, that’s certainly a significant development.

Gradkowski has obviously proven in the past that he can be a capable backup player, which includes a victory over the Steelers while he was with the Oakland Raiders. He has also fulfilled that role for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Cleveland Browns, and, most recently, the Cincinnati Bengals, which is what attracted the Steelers to him.

That doesn’t mean that you want him playing, however. After all, he is a backup for a reason, and unless your team is in the middle of a second-half rout, it means that your starter is down for one reason or another.

Gradkowski has a career 21-24 touchdown to interception ratio, and has also lost half of his 20 total fumbles. He has completed just under 53 percent of his 709 passes for a mere 4057 yards, which equates to a yards per attempt figure of 5.7. His career quarterback rating stands at just 65.8.

But you have to take into consideration the pieces he had around him, as well as the fact that almost half of those figures come from his rookie season, when he made 11 starts for the Buccaneers.

He wasn’t throwing to Josh Gordon when he was with the Browns. The Raiders haven’t had a notable receiver in many a year, and 307 of his career pass attempts were spent aimed at the likes of Louis Murphy, Darrius Heyward-Bey, Jacoby Ford, and Chaz Schilens. Spoiler: there’s nary a Pro Bowl betwixt them.

So let’s take this time to celebrate the best season a backup quarterback has had behind Roethlisberger since the beginning of his pro career: a year spent with a clip board in his hands and a hat on his head, rather than a helmet. And let’s hope for an encore performance this year.

Steelers Depot

By Matthew Marczi

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