Delving into several aspects of Kenny Pickett’s 2022 rookie season recently, the next thing I wanted to dive into was how he performed at home and away, to see if there is anything to glean for 2023. Today’s article will use Sports Info Solution’s (SIS) points earned metric, defined as the total of a player’s EPA responsibility on passes using the Total Points system that distributes credit among all players on the field for a given play.
Totals are scaled up to map to the average points scored or allowed on a team level, with the player’s snap count determining how much to adjust. For passers, this includes accounting for offensive line play, sacks, off-target passes, dropped passes, and dropped interceptions.
Here are the 2022 regular season results:
Through the entire 2022 regular season, Pickett landed at 25th out of the 35 qualifying quarterbacks with a minimum of 200 drop backs, with 34.95 points earned. Seeing the vast majority of quarterbacks that led their squads to the postseason landing in the top half of the results emphasizes the value of the metric in my opinion — and where Pickett’s number needs to be to hopefully help the Black and Gold achieve this in 2023.
Fifty points earned or more would be fantastic, considering only two playoff quarterbacks where below that number in Lamar Jackson and Jimmy Garoppolo. But it’s important to recall that both missed time to end the season, which capped their numbers. This point applies to Pickett as well, and along with the second-year jump many expect leaves me optimistic he can provide this for Pittsburgh this year. And Patrick Mahomes…wow.
Next, let’s see how quarterbacks did in their home stadiums:
Here we see Pickett fared much better at home, providing 26.4 of his 34.95 points earned in Acrisure Stadium, which ranked 21st. This came on seven games played, with only two of those occurring in the first half of the season (Weeks 1-9), as opposed to the other five games the latter half of the year when Pickett and the offense made encouraging strides overall, important quality context that makes sense.
To further this point, Pickett’s strongest two home performances came at the end of 2022, with 10.68 points earned in the Week 16 victory against the Raiders (13-10) that included a game-winning drive, and 9.75 in the Week 18 win against the Browns (28-14) that included a touchdown. Here’s to hoping he can provide a more consistent 2023 campaign closer to what we saw at the end of his rookie season, seeing the strong correlation to the points earned metric and the ultimate goal of winning.
To close, here’s how things played out for quarterbacks in away games:
Very stark difference for Pickett on the road his rookie year, with just 8.55 points earned in away games. That ranked 30th among the 35 qualifying quarterbacks. We can clearly see that this is where we need to see the biggest improvement in year two, and from the 2023 Steelers offense. Pickett appeared in six away games, with his best 7.63 points earned coming against the Ravens in Week 17, including a game-winning drive (16-13) in Pittsburgh’s final road game, which re-emphasizes his strong play to end 2022 once again.
The two worst performances came before the bye week against tough opponents. Pickett had a -1.63 against the Dolphins in Week Seven on one touchdown and three interceptions in a 16-10 loss, and in a Week Eight outing against the Eagles, he had -10.33 points earned with no touchdowns, an interception, and two fumbles in a crushing 35-13 loss.
While the hope is for Pickett and the offense to improve overall, the data highlights a clear need to perform better in opposing stadiums and find more consistency throughout the season. I can’t wait to see how it pans out this year.
What are your thoughts on the data from 2022? Do you think Pickett and the 2023 offense will improve in this regard? Thanks for reading and let me know your thoughts in the comments.
