Being drafted in the first round by the Pittsburgh Steelers hasn’t exactly been followed up with a charmed life in recent years. Their last home run first-round selection is T.J. Watt in 2017, and he was preceded by Artie Burns. The two who followed him, Terrell Edmunds and Devin Bush, are already gone.
They didn’t have a first-round pick in 2020, but their following two top selections have been under fire as well. That includes their purported “franchise” quarterback, Kenny Pickett, drafted in 2022. Many, many fans have seemingly turned their back on him over the past month or two, those tensions escalating in the past week.
He was heavily criticized in some corners for responding in the negative to a question last week about whether he’d learned anything new while having had the opportunity to watch from the sideline. More recent rumors continue to paint him in a negative light, which as of yet are unsubstantiated, about his willingness to dress as a backup.
The point is, it’s all raised questions about how he’s handling it all—literally—because that’s what head coach Mike Tomlin has been asked, in a variety of ways, in recent weeks. “I’m not getting into all of that”, he told reporters yesterday, via the team’s website. “I’ll let him speak for himself. You guys can ask him when he has availability later in the week”.
Given the background of the past week, it should make for an interesting media session. I’m sure he’ll be asked about his terse answer last week when asked about having learned anything from an observational point of view. He’ll be asked about his inactive status in the last game, even as an emergency option.
He’ll be asked about being healthy and not starting, what that means for the playoffs, and what it means for his long-term future. Given that this could very well be his final formal media setting of the 2023 season, it could carry a lot of weight in terms of how he is perceived heading into the offseason.
An increasing number of fans have already given up on him as the Steelers’ answer at the quarterback position and are finding additional reasons to dislike him where they can. I personally have nothing against him. I just wish he would have thrown a lot more touchdown passes when he was on the field. None of his platitudes to the media when the Steelers were winning and everybody still liked him changed that reality.
