Pittsburgh Steelers QB Kenny Pickett has only logged 10 snaps so far during the preseason, consisting of one drive that ended in seven points. It’s a small but impressive sample size, but fairly consistent with what we have been reading about him during training camp throughout the past weeks.
And it also echoes the thoughts of Movin’ the Chains’ Pat Kirwan and Jim Miller, who visited camp a couple of weeks back during their training camp tour for SiriusXM Radio. Speaking to a caller about Pickett recently the host duo came away impressed.
“We were very high on the praise for Kenny, when we were there, when we left there, and in comparison”, Kirwan said. “As we went down the road after that camp, we started looking at all the quarterbacks as it relates to [Pickett], especially your divisional opponents, because we went right from there to Cleveland and then Baltimore, so we got a good feel for your division. We all know who Joe Burrow is”.
“The four best quarterbacks we saw on our camp tour”, added Miller, “were [Pickett], Jared Goff, Trevor Lawrence, and the guy out there in the great northwest yesterday. Geno Smith is throwing the football now. That guy can spin it”.
That evaluation comes with a very hefty caveat, to be fair. While the network visited all 32 camps, Kirwan and Miller combined only visited 13 different camps on their own, with some glaring omissions for comparative purposes. They did not visit Kansas City, for example. They did not see Burrow in Cincinnati or Justin Herbert out west or Aaron Rodgers in New York or Jalen Hurts in Philadelphia.
The camps that one or both of them visited, for context, were the Chicago Bears, the New England Patriots, the Buffalo Bills, the Detroit Lions, the Cleveland Browns, the Baltimore Ravens, the Washington Commanders, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Las Vegas Raiders, the Denver Broncos, the Seattle Seahawks, and of course the Steelers.
Truth be told, of that group, I would hope that Pickett came out right near the top. Now, they did not mention Josh Allen in Buffalo, perhaps an omission, though they did specifically mention Cleveland with Deshaun Watson and Baltimore with Lamar Jackson.
The second-year quarterback does sound as though he has made some significant strides from his rookie year, which he began on the bench. That should only be expected for a young player in his position. But in how many games that he plays this year will he be the best quarterback on the field?
