Kenny Pickett has had an interesting start to his NFL career. On the negative side, he’s only thrown for 12 touchdown passes over 17 starts, and has failed to help his offense put substantial points on the board in quite a few of those contests.
However, Pickett has already led five game-winning drives as well as four fourth-quarter comebacks in his young career. He’s also led the Steelers to a respectable 10-7 record over his starts. What’s most promising of all is the command Pickett seems to have over the locker room, something that has doomed many a young quarterback before.
For Bill Simmons, this all sounds familiar. Simmons even went as far as to compare Pickett to a young Eli Manning on The Bill Simmons Podcast recently.
“It’s an incredible comparison. The throw he had to Pickens at the end of the Ravens game is the most Eli moment ever that Eli wasn’t involved in.” Simmons noted. “It’s very similar to the Eli thing in that, the teammates love Eli, they trusted Eli for whatever reason, he would come through over and over again in big moments, you would watch the totality of his games and say ‘is Eli Manning good?’. Maybe Kenny Pickett is becoming the new Eli?”
The sentiment that Steelers fan and NFL Analyst Craig Horlbeck, who was also on the podcast had to this comparison was positive. I imagine most Steelers fans would feel the same.
While Eli Manning was never in the mix to be the best quarterback in the league at any given time, he has a very good shot at making the Hall of Fame, and his teams had quite a bit of success in the modern NFL.
Those Giants teams who won Super Bowls in 2007 and 2011 offer solid blueprints to how this particular Steelers team can succeed. Control the game with your pass rush and your running game, and let Manning work his magic late. This recipe worked quite well for the Giants, and it could for the Steelers too.
There are a few problems however, the main one being Pickett isn’t quite Manning yet. He’s shown flashes but Manning didn’t quite struggle to generate points and passing touchdowns early in his career like Pickett has. Although Manning was rough his rookie season, going just 1-6 in seven starts with six touchdowns, he figured it out quickly in his sophomore year, throwing for 24 TDs and leading the Giants to an 11-5 record and a playoff birth. Maybe we will see similar results from Pickett in year two.
While it isn’t really fair to compare a guy who has 12 career passing touchdowns to a likely Hall of Famer, this comparison does offer some context on what a best-case Kenny Pickett career could look like. And if it results in two Super Bowls for the Steelers, it’s safe to say that would be marked a success for Pickett.
