The tendency for Pittsburgh Steelers QB Kenny Pickett to scramble out of the pocket has been a topic of conversation lately, and not without reason. It’s hard not to talk about it coming off a game in which he only narrowly avoided serious injury, it seems, after scrambling right into a sack unnecessarily.
The subject came out this week when Pro Football Focus’ Steve Palazzolo was on 93.7 The Fan with Andrew Fillipponi and Chris Mueller. He was asked if he could recall an example of other quarterbacks cleaning up this issue in their game—with one interesting name.
“Oh man. Not many. Aaron Rodgers went through a stretch where he was doing that”, he said, “where he would not want to play within structure, seemingly, and you’re talking about one of the best quarterbacks of all time, and he just had no trust in Mike McCarthy’s offense, it seemed. It became one read and then ‘Okay, I’m gonna play backyard football’”.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of regular readers know exactly what he was talking about. The end of the McCarthy era with the Green Bay Packers was not pretty. They went 6-9-1 in his final season there, and he didn’t even survive the year, fired before it was over. And then Rodgers started winning MVPs again.
Does Pickett trust his offense right now? His offensive line? His receivers? Perhaps not all at the same time on any given play. That’s obviously the case, or else there would be no reasonable explanation for the frequency with which he feels pressured to escape clean or manageable pockets.
“It looked like a lack of trust in the offense with Mike McCarthy, and then Matt LeFleur came in. They had some growing pains, and then they clicked”, Palazzolo said. And he pointed to former Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger as an example of a player who can adjust styles over time and merge them.
“Ben found that balance of the quick-hitting passing game and then, ‘Alright, it’s third and long, let me go make a play’”, he pointed out. “There is absolutely a balance to that”. Roethlisberger became a pocket passer in the latter stages of his career after being very much the opposite early on.
The thing is, it’s not all in Pickett’s head, at least not all the time. According to PFF, for example, no starting quarterback had faced a higher percentage of pressure this year, on 46.8 percent of his dropbacks. Is some of that a product of him scrambling into pressure? Yes? But one of the reasons he’s doing that is because he’s anticipating pressure even when it’s not there. And he doesn’t trust that his receivers will flash open in time for him to deliver a pass before getting lit up.
“Everything’s bad at the wrong time”, Palazzolo said of the state of the Steelers’ passing game, citing the lack of open targets and poor pass protection. It’s liable to make a quarterback gun-shy, but, again, it doesn’t excuse the behavior even if it works to explain it. Understanding why it happens is a part of the solution.
