Ending drives with strong red zone play is obviously extremely important for a successful offense, so today I wanted to look at and provide data on quarterback Kenny Pickett’s rookie year for the Pittsburgh Steelers in this regard. The struggles in 2022 have been well documented this offseason by several folks, including our own Alex Kozora’s recent dive in his Numbers To Note series. The main stat I would like to provide is hopefully a unique one that you haven’t seen yet: Individual Quarterback Rating (IQR) from Sports Info Solutions (SIS), which is their proprietary metric that builds on the traditional Passer Rating formula by considering the value of a quarterback independent of the results outside of his control such as dropped passes, dropped interceptions, throwaways, etc. This is a valuable stat for the situation, in my opinion, and I will look at NFL quarterbacks with a minimum of 30 regular-season red-zone attempts in 2022, along with how things progressed in the first and last half of the year as well.
Here are the 2022 regular season results:
Pickett’s 66.1 IQR in the regular season ranked dead last among the 33 qualifying quarterbacks. He was one of only two players below 70. A very painful number indeed and gives the struggles comparative context around the NFL. This came on 61 red zone drop backs (16th) and 53 attempts (16th) in 12 games played. Pickett had only five touchdowns, which tied for last with Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson, who played in literally half as many games (ouch). Other important factors to his worst red zone IQR were the six sacks he took (second most) for a 9.8 sack percentage (fifth most), 41.5 completion rate (32nd), 56.8 on target pass percentage (32nd), and an extremely low 9.4 touchdown percentage (last), with the next worst rate coming in at a substantially higher 16.7 percent. A rarely encouraging facet to Pickett’s red zone play in 2022 was only one interception, for a 1.9 interception rate (T-16th). Hopefully this is the lone aspect that will carry over for Pickett, and we see necessary improvements in Year Two from him and the Pittsburgh offense.
Next, let’s look at the first half of the 2022 season:
In Weeks One through Nine, Pickett’s IQR came in slightly lower at 65.5 (66.1 on the season). which ranked 31st. This bested only Broncos quarterback Russell Wilson, who struggled mightily in this span with the lowest 56.3 IQR across the whole study. To begin the year, Pickett had 26 red-zone drop backs (27th), 21 attempts (28th), two of his five TDs on the year for a 9.5 percent touchdown rate, which was the second-worst mark, and three sacks, which was half of his season total for an 11.5 sack rate that was second most. This is important to factor in with the well-documented offensive line struggles to begin the season, and the results in the span. Pickett’s 42.9 completion rate was slightly higher than the full regular season (41.5 percent), still ranking very low at 30th, but his 56.3 on target percentage was a bit lower and also ranked 30th. His only red zone interception on the year came in the time frame. That seems impressive but considering less playing time, it resulted in a 4.8 interception percentage that ranked 30th. We can clearly see the struggles across the board for the Steelers and Pickett in red zone passing the first half of the year, ranking at the bottom of the league across the board.
To close, here are how things progressed in the second half of 2022:
Here is where Pickett make improvement as his rookie season played out, but we see an exception was unfortunately in the red zone, highlighting this aspect of the game being one of the highest priorities for Pittsburgh’s offense to improve in 2023. His IQR the latter half of 2022 barely increased to 66.7 (66.1 on the year), landing him at 31st. Let’s add more context to his late season IQR: 35 red zone drop backs (T-13th), 32 attempts (12th), only three touchdowns for a 9.4 TD rate that ranked last, encouragingly no interceptions, 40.6 percent completion rate (30th), a 57.1 on target percentage (30th), and three sacks for an improved 8.6 sack percentage (23rd) that makes the lack of improvement elsewhere even more discouraging.
So, Pickett and the Steelers passing offense in the red zone struggled overall and lacked improvement as we saw in several other facets of the game as the year unfolded. The biggest area in which Pickett should aim to improve, in my opinion, is his red zone accuracy, highlighted by his on-target percentages ranking 30th or worse throughout the study. This would likely aid in the needed improvements across the board, with scoring ideally at the top of that list, where Pickett ranked in the bottom two in each view today and tied for dead last on the season. The two encouraging takeaways were an improved sack rate and only one interception, which can hopefully hold true as the Steelers and Pickett aim for a much more successful 2023 season in the red zone.
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.
