Steelers Lose Aaron Rodgers for Bears Game

Head coach Mike Tomlin confirmed the news with CBS Sports, and said to Steelers.com earlier in the day that the team was looking for clearance before giving Rodgers the go ahead.

"Clearance. Sometimes clearance is simply thumbs up or thumbs down. Sometimes clearance involves medical devices used to secure an area of the body. Sometimes it may require medicine, and it might take a certain amount of time for that medicine to kick in. And so clearance is a loose term that could mean a lot of things," Tomlin said.

Rudolph has been in this situation before. He holds a 9-8-1 record as a starting quarterback and has taken over for periods of time for the Steelers in the past. Before his year-long gap when he played for the Tennessee Titans, Rudolph led the team into the postseason after replacing Kenny Pickett and Mitch Trubisky.

Tomlin believes that Rudolph is the perfect backup for this team and he'll get a shot to prove that this week.

"To me, confidence is the most significant thing," Tomlin said. "Certainly, he's a sharp guy, and he works with extreme urgency day-to-day. And I think that positions him for performance when he's maybe not getting a lot of significant reps. And so when you have a certain level of maturity, you're a smart enough guy that you can learn from watching others, or learn from a minimal number of snaps, I think those are the tangible things that potentially elevates performance under those circumstances. But I'll take the intangible things over the tangible things 100 percent of the time – a guy who doesn't blink, a guy who's capable of instilling confidence in others, a guy who has belief in self. And he checks those boxes."