Kenny Pickett Behind In Quarterback Battle

When the Pittsburgh Steelers selected Kenny Pickett with the 20th overall pick in this year’s draft, many believed they had landed the most ‘pro-ready’ quarterback in a bad class at the position. Recent reports from the Steelers’ offseason activities undermine that assessment.

Mark Kaboly of The Athletic reported Pickett worked exclusively with the third-string offense during OTAs and mandatory minicamp, with his place in the pecking order for those practices suggesting he faces an uphill battle to win the starting job in an apparent competition with free-agent signing Mitchell Trubisky.

It is easy to read too much into reports from OTAs and minicamp and a better indication of where Pickett is in his development will come during training camp and preseason. Yet seemingly being so far behind Trubisky—a quarterback who quickly fell from No. 2 pick of the Chicago Bears in 2017 to backup for the Buffalo Bills—does not leave much room for optimism surrounding Pickett.

Over four seasons in Chicago, Trubisky was 35th out of the 55 quarterbacks with at least 400 plays between 2017 and 2020 in Ben Baldwin’s Expected Points Added and Completion Percentage Over Expectation composite metric.

He was often in a bad situation with the Bears, but the bottom line is Trubisky was not accurate or efficient in his first experience as a starter. If Pickett does fail to beat him for the job, it will be a poor reflection of the Steelers’ decision to draft him so highly when the various slides of his contemporaries in the draft indicated they could have potentially taken him in the second round.

Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin will care little about external assessments of the roster decisions made by Pittsburgh and a coach who has never experienced a losing season will likely find a way to negate the deficiencies of the quarterback he picks to start and ensure a competitive campaign for his team.

It would be foolish to write off Pickett based off his first OTAs and minicamp. However, after never really competing to go deep into the playoffs in the final years of Ben Roethlisberger’s career, the Steelers cannot afford to waste a talented roster on a quarterback who does not possess the ability to elevate the team to greater heights.

There is little evidence Trubisky can lift those around him and, while it is way too early to be overly concerned about Pickett, Steelers fans could be forgiven for already feeling a little nervous about their rookie quarterback.