Pittsburgh Steelers second-year quarterback Kenny Pickett is notably not a big numbers guy. Pickett prefers to win games and doesn’t care what his numbers look like, as long as the most important thing is showing at the end of the game: his team winning.
Last season as a rookie, Pickett posted modest numbers, throwing for 2,404 yards, seven touchdowns and nine interceptions, adding another 237 yards and three touchdowns on the ground. With improved talent around him on the offensive line and added weapons in wide receiver Allen Robinson II and tight end Darnell Washington to pair with some talented playmakers like Diontae Johnson, George Pickens, Pat Freiermuth and Najee Harris, Pickett should have a bigger year — as far as raw statistics go — in 2023.
For Sports Illustrated’s Connor Orr, he’s buying in on Pickett entering Year 2 and believes that he’ll be one of the top quarterbacks in the NFL in one key advanced metric, rather than the usual statistics.
In a piece for SI.com, Orr predicted Pickett to be a top-12 NFL quarterback in 2023 in the advanced metric EPA+CPOE, which is a rather important advanced metric for quarterbacks in today’s game.
“The metric measures how much value a quarterback adds to a play over what’s expected and also how many passes a quarterback completes over what was expected. It’s usually a pretty fair gauge of talent and value, with a few outliers,” Orr writes “I’m buying big on Pickett in his second season, and I think you should, too.”
EPA is expected points added per play and includes penalties and does not penalize QBs for fumbles on completed passes, while CPOE is completion percentage over expected for quarterbacks.
Last season, Pickett finished No. 22 in EPA+CPOE, scoring a composite of 0.061, just ahead of the Los Angeles Rams’ Matthew Stafford, Chicago’s Justin Fields and Arizona’s Kyler Murray in the advanced metric.
New York’s Daniel Jones finished as the 12th-best quarterback in the metric last season, coming in at 0.101.
If Pickett can perform the way he did in the second half of the season, cutting down drastically on the mistakes, he’ll finish top 12 in the league in the advanced metric. In the second half of the season last year, Pickett was 13th at the position in EPA+CPOE with a composite score of 0.083, just behind Tampa Bay’s Tom Brady, who was 12th with a 0.089 composite score.
Finishing top 12 in the advanced metric, which is certainly a fair gauge of talent and value, would be part of a significant step forward in Pickett’s game at the most important position.
Though he’d have a long, long, long way to go to reach the heights that Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes is at (0.178 composite led the league), he’d be on a good pace overall in his career. Interestingly enough, two other AFC North QBs were top 12 last season in the metric with Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow finishing sixth at 0.127 and Cleveland’s Jacoby Brissett 11th at 0.105.
Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson finished 13th at 0.084, while Cleveland’s Deshaun Watson finished 32nd at 0.015. Baltimore’s Tyler Huntley didn’t reach the minimum of 200 snaps played to qualify for the rankings.
