At this point in the pre-draft process, if you’re not finding a way to mock one of the top 3 QBs to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the first round, you’re doing it wrong.
Fortunately for NFL Network’s Charles Davis, he understood the assignment.
Throughout the pre-draft process, the Steelers have been putting in a lot of work surrounding the top quarterbacks in the 2022 NFL Draft in an effort to find the next franchise quarterback post-Ben Roethlisberger, having attended the Pro Days of Liberty’s Malik Willis, Pittsburgh’s Kenny Pickett, Ole Miss’s Matt Corral, Cincinnati’s Desmond Ridder, and North Carolina’s Sam Howell. It’s very clear that the Steelers are heavily targeting a quarterback later this month in the first round.
Knowing that, Davis settled on a QB to the Steelers at No. 20 overall in his latest mock draft, making many local college football fans rather happy as he has the Steelers selecting Pickett to be the next guy in the Steel City.
“The Steelers have been out in force doing their homework on this year’s crop of QBs, and they should have plenty of information on Pickett, given that they share a training facility with Pitt,” Davis writes. “Pickett’s ascension during the 2021 season was enthralling, and the Steelers get a chance to bring him along slowly after the addition of Mitch Trubisky. A potential surprise pick here: Cincinnati QB Desmond Ridder.”
Should the Steelers draft Pickett, there would be no bringing him along slowly, considering he’s one of the most pro-ready quarterbacks in the class, and will be 24 years old at the start of training camp, making him a bit older overall as a prospect.
With that said, Pickett would push the likes of Mitch Trubisky and Mason Rudolph immediately, which could be viewed as a positive and a negative for the Steelers: a positive because a first-round QB is ready to make an impact immediately. A negative because the signing of Trubisky for a decent price in free agency would be rendered moot, at least on paper, with an NFL-ready QB.
The selection of Pickett — based on how the board fell in Davis’s mock draft with Liberty’s Malik Willis to the Carolina Panthers at No. 6 overall — makes sense overall, considering the Steelers’ familiarity with the Panthers’ star, but his ceiling feels limited overall. It would make sense to go with an upside bet like a Desmond Ridder or Matt Corral there, rather than settling for an older prospect overall that would make for an odd fit in a deep QB room.
