Pittsburgh Steelers QB Kenny Pickett has about a year’s worth of starting experience now in the NFL. He has failed to finish three games that he has started, getting knocked out of those contests due to injury. The first two caused him to suffer concussions. It was a rib injury that knocked him out of Sunday’s game against the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Yet while the NFL may penalize hits on quarterbacks by the likes of Steelers S Minkah Fitzpatrick that many have found questionable, it doesn’t seem as though Pickett is getting the same sort of treatment in terms of protection.
At least, that was the implication of the question he was asked yesterday following a game in which he took multiple questionable hits that were not flagged, including the one that injured him. “I’ve had a couple where I felt like I was gonna get some, but I haven’t gotten them yet”, he told reporters, via the team’s website. “It is what it is. Just got to keep playing”.
There have been 55 roughing-the-passer penalties flagged so far this season. Of the 55 none have benefitted the Pittsburgh Steelers, though they have been flagged twice—once by Fitzpatrick, once by S Keanu Neal in Sunday’s game. In fact, Pittsburgh is one of only eight teams yet to be the beneficiary of a roughing-the-passer penalty this year.
Yet that doesn’t make it a widespread phenomenon or some conspiracy against Pittsburgh. In actual fact, the Steelers drew five roughing-the-passer penalties during the 2022 season, Pickett the quarterback taking the hit on three occasions.
At the same time, a history of penalties being properly enforced in the past does not justify officials missing calls now. There were multiple hits by Las Vegas Raiders DL Maxx Crosby against Pickett that ought to have drawn a flag, including one where he made clear contact with the quarterback in the head and neck area, firmly striking his facemask.
In a game in which Neal was flagged questionably for roughing the passer, many failed to understand, for example, why the above example did not receive the same treatment. I really don’t have a good explanation, but I simply know that if that wasn’t a penalty, the Neal hit shouldn’t have been either.
Roughing-the-passer penalties and how they are officiated in terms of consistency has been an ongoing discussion for many, many years. There is nothing indicating that that will ever change. There is too much human influence in the equation to ever hope to find any kind of meaningful consistency.
But you would at least hope that one single officiating crew on one particular afternoon would be able to call it evenly throughout the game. We did not see that this past Sunday. And Pickett hasn’t been on the favorable end of things so far this year, leading some to wonder if he has yet to “earn” that protection seemingly enjoyed by perceptually more important players.
