Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Kenny Pickett now has a full season of stats as a starter under his belt, and his numbers are far from gaudy. But one thing he’s done is win, and in the NFL, that’s the most important thing you can do as a quarterback. After the Steelers advanced to 4-2 with a 24-17 win over the Los Angeles Rams that included a nearly flawless fourth quarter out of Pickett, former Steelers MVP quarterback Terry Bradshaw called Pickett the “perfect” quarterback for Pittsburgh.
“I’ll tell you what. Pickett doesn’t throw for a lot of touchdowns. Yet. In time he will. But he’s the perfect quarterback for this team. Very selfless type human being, he doesn’t mind handing the ball off, he’s great in the clutch, great under pressure,” Bradshaw said on the FOX Postgame Show, passed along by Andrew Filliponi of 93.7 The Fan on Twitter.
Pickett becomes a different quarterback in the fourth quarter, and yesterday was no different. He’s found a way to help this team win games late in the game, and with a defense led by Alex Highsmith and T.J. Watt, who have both been second to none when it comes to forcing turnovers (Watt had a key third-quarter interception on Sunday to set up Pittsburgh’s first touchdown), it’s a good recipe for success.
Obviously, you want to see more out of Pickett. He needs to string his performances over all four quarters, but if you’re going to pick one quarter to be at your best, it might as well be the fourth when it’s crunch time and he can go win the Steelers a game. Pickett had as good of a fourth quarter as he could have had on Sunday, not throwing an incompletion as he went 7-of-7 for 138 yards, and the Steelers had their most fourth-quarter first downs since December 2017, per Michael Bertsch of the Steelers PR Department.
At 4-2, the Steelers have put themselves in a good spot for the rest of the season. They have a tough test with the Jacksonville Jaguars coming to Acrisure Stadium next week, before they host the Tennessee Titans on Thursday Night Football on a short week. Both games are winnable, but they’ll be good tests to see exactly where this Steelers team is.
They didn’t look like they had much of a shot against Los Angeles after the Rams responded to Pittsburgh’s third-quarter touchdown with one of their own, but two missed field goals by Brett Maher and Pickett turning it on in the fourth quarter gave Pittsburgh the edge they needed.
The next few weeks will determine whether they’re contenders or pretenders, and a lot of that is going to rest on the shoulders of Pickett. He needs to prove he can keep winning games, even if his performance looks ugly for a few quarters. But if he starts stringing full games together with the way he plays in the fourth quarter, the Steelers are going to be a dangerous team.
