The struggles throwing the football in the middle of the field the last two seasons for the Pittsburgh Steelers offensively have been well documented.
Pittsburgh largely avoided the middle of the field in Ben Roethlisberger’s final season, as well as throughout the 2022 season — which happened to be Kenny Pickett’s first in the NFL.
The middle of the field is a very valuable area in today’s NFL game, especially from a passing-game standpoint.
Those gripes regarding the Steelers and the lack of usage in the middle of the field in the passing game are warranted. According to PFF’s QB Annual, the route heat map that tracked all routes and targets from the 2022 season was rather ice cold in the middle of the field between the has marks, especially with Pickett at the helm.
It’s not as if the talent isn’t there to truly attack the middle of the field and take advantage of that spacing providing by the defense. While there is deserved criticism regarding the lack of throws to the middle of the field, it helps that Pickett was dominant at throwing outside of the numbers.
According to Pro Football Focus’ QB Annual, which breaks down every quarterback in the NFL in a number of metrics, Pickett was the sixth-best quarterback last season when throwing outside of the numbers.
“Pickett was up there with the best when it came to throwing outside of the numbers last season,” the QB Annual wrote. “His 81.8 passing grade on throws outside the numbers ranked sixth at the position. He recorded 12 big-time throws to just three turnover-worthy plays.”
In the QB Annual charting, Pickett was much better throwing to his left outside of the numbers than to his right. That is pretty interesting, considering he’s a right-handed quarterback and the right side of the field is technically closer and more readily accessible in the passing game.
Per the charting, Pickett had grades of 81.6 to the left and 20-plus yards down the field, whereas the league average grade was 72.7. In the window of 10-19 yards to the left, Pickett had a grade of 73.6 with the league average grade being 64.5, and to the left on throws less than 10 yards Pickett had a grade of 75.7 with the average grade being 65.9.
As you can see in the numbers, Pickett was well above average in all three areas of the field to his left. To the right, he was slightly above average, but not as good as he was throwing to his left. Those numbers to the right? At 20-plus yards he had a grade of 77.5 with the NFL average grade sitting at 76.9. In the 10-19 window, Pickett graded out at 73.9 with the league average grade coming in at 68.5. In the less than 10 yards window, Pickett had a grade of 66.1 against a league average grade of 62.4.
It then comes as no surprise that on his two highest-targeted routes per the QB Annual, those being the hitch and the out route outside of the numbers, Pickett had his highest passer rating. On hitch routes, which he targeted 19 percent of the time, Pickett had a passer rating of 89.5. On out routes, which he targeted 10 percent of the time, Pickett had a passer rating of 96.7.
Some strong numbers overall.
While Pickett was really good at throwing outside of the numbers, which led to quite a bit of success for the Steelers offense when throwing to wide receivers Diontae Johnson and George Pickens — who was a contested-catch monster down the stretch — there has to be an improvement throwing to the middle of the field.
Defenses are going to adjust to what Pickett did well as a rookie, which was throwing outside of the numbers on timing routes. They’ll change the coverages and looks some and force him to try and win over the middle of the field with throws into tighter windows. He certainly proved he could make all of the NFL-level throws to the boundary, though, which is a huge positive in his development overall.
