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Last night’s helmet-flinging fracas in Cleveland has helped take attention away from Saturday’s performance from an unemployed quarterback. It also helped take attention away from Thursday’s performance from a quarterback who perhaps should be.

Mason Rudolph played poorly, showing no reason to persuade anyone that he should be regarded as the potential successor to Ben Roethlisberger. For the night, Rudolph completed 23 of 44 passes for 221 yards, one touchdown, and four interceptions. His performance generated a passer rating of 36.3.

By way of his comparison, if he’d simply failed to complete any of his 44 passes, Rudolph’s passer rating would have been 39.58.

For the season, the man some have dubbed Mason Peterman has now thrown 12 touchdown passes and eight interceptions, along with 1,551 yards. With Devlin Hodges also on the roster, some are wondering whether he should supplant Rudolph, immediately.

Others are wondering whether coach Mike Tomlin, whose team doesn’t play Sunday, should go to Atlanta to watch the Colin Kaepernick workout. Tomlin at one point gave a job to Mike Vick, someone who actually did something for which he should have been ostracized by the league. Even though his absence from the NFL happened only during the years when he was unavailable to play because he was in prison.