I am afraid that it is once again time to inform you that Pittsburgh Steelers QB Kenny Pickett is absolutely terrible at scoring points. And by terrible, I mean historically terrible. The worst of all time among starting quarterbacks with a reasonable amount of playing experience. The face of the franchise is now the only quarterback ever to attempt 500 or more passes while throwing for a touchdown on fewer than two percent of them.
The second-year quarterback just dipped below the two-percent mark on Sunday after failing to find the end zone yet again on his 28 pass attempts, becoming a recurring theme. He has been held without a touchdown pass in five of his past six games, and six of his past eight, with just two in total in that span after throwing four in the first three weeks.
With 13 career touchdown passes on 680 attempts, Pickett’s touchdown percentage is now down to 1.91 percent. According to Pro Football Reference, he is now one-of-one among all players in recorded league history who have attempted at least 500 passes, falling behind the likes of Gary Huff, Chris Weinke, DeShone Kizer, and Ryan Leaf. Granted, if his next pass were a touchdown, it would push him back over two percent. But his career has shown us that we can’t take as a given when his next one will come.
I would like to remind you that it is important for quarterbacks to score points. Points are how you win games, and Pickett is not rushing for touchdowns, or even leading many touchdown drives for that matter. The Steelers rank near the bottom both in total points scored and in points scored per drive. There’s no lipstick pretty enough for this pig.
Pickett’s 1.8-percent touchdown rate during his rookie season was frustrating enough, but the lack of meaningful improvement has meant a constant state of desperation for the Steelers with a touchdown percentage of 2.14 in 2023. They have largely managed to thrive in pressure situations, but it caught up to them yesterday in their 13-10 defeat at the hands of the Cleveland Browns, their first one-score loss in rather awhile.
It’s simply not sufficient to hang around, hang, around, hang around, and then hope for the best in the final five to 10 minutes. The Steelers managed to sustain the unsustainable for most of this season, but this is not a survivable scenario that could take them anywhere near where they would like to go—as in deep into the postseason.
Fear not, though, there are some quarterbacks who failed to reach 500 career pass attempts who were even worse at scoring than Pickett. Jimmy Clausen, for example, threw just seven touchdowns on 472 attempts. Akili Smith threw just five on 461 attempts. He barely managed to hit one percent, let alone two.
But 500 pass attempts are a pretty reasonable benchmark, I’d like to think, for ascertaining whether a quarterback is capable of producing the needed points. And if you’re wondering about quarterbacks at similar stages of their career, it still doesn’t get much better. Sure, there have been about a dozen or so quarterbacks with a worse touchdown rate in their first 25 starts, but nobody you’d want to be associated with. Tom Savage. Kelly Stouffer. Trent Dilfer. Does that inspire any confidence in you?
