After sitting out entirely of Sunday’s win over the Seattle Seahawks, the No. 3 quarterback without even an emergency designation, Kenny Pickett confirmed to reporters Tuesday that he will be the No. 2 quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers’ regular-season finale against the Baltimore Ravens.
Refuting reports that he refused to serve as the No. 2 quarterback for the Seahawks game, Pickett noted he will be Mason Rudolph’s backup this Saturday.
“This week, I’m now the two,” he said via ESPN’s Brooke Pryor. “They feel good four weeks out of the surgery for me to dress and be the two. So I will be the two and do what I have to do to be ready for Baltimore.”
That will make Mitch Trubisky the emergency third quarterback this weekend. Week 18 will mark the first time Pickett has dressed since getting hurt in early December against the Arizona Cardinals. The following day, he underwent tightrope surgery on his ankle, the same surgery he had in college that caused him to miss 26 days. His timeline this time around has been a little longer, essentially a full month of action missed, as he’s been eased back into playing. Over the last two weeks, he practiced on a limited basis.
Medically cleared late last week, as Mike Tomlin outlined during his Monday press conference, the team chose not to dress him as the No. 2 due to a lack of reps and uncertainty about his performance if he had to step in. It’s also the reason why he wasn’t designated as the emergency third quarterback and was simply inactive.
“That clarity didn’t come until later in the week,” Tomlin said yesterday. “And it was about the distribution of reps and who was best prepared and positioned to help us win. And so that’s the direction that we went with.”
Presumably, Pickett will be off this week’s injury report, or at the least shown as a full participant in practice. It seems he will work second-team behind Rudolph, who put in another solid performance as the Steelers recorded 30 or more points in back-to-back games for the first time since 2020.
This will be the first time Pickett will act as the Steelers’ No. 2 since Week Four of last season when he began the New York Jets game on the bench before replacing Trubisky at halftime. He earned his first start the following week in Buffalo.
