The NFL draft is what dreams are made of, as much for the talent-needy teams as for the talent themselves, and the Pittsburgh Steelers have a dream of better quarterback play this season, whether from Kenny Pickett or elsewhere.
The chances are incredibly low that the Steelers will turn any of those dreams into reality through the 2024 NFL Draft, however. As is almost always the case, the best quarterbacks coming out of college will be out of their reach. And the ones who they would have a shot at leave much to be desired, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Ray Fittipaldo.
“I was down here watching the Senior Bowl this week…to me, there’s no difference between Kenny Pickett and Bo Nix”, he told Christopher Carter on the North Shore Drive podcast. “There’s no difference between Kenny Pickett and Michael Penix Jr. These second-tier quarterbacks in this draft, I don’t believe [the quarterbacks in the 2024 NFL Draft] would be an upgrade over Kenny Pickett”.
He noted that top quarterback prospects Caleb Williams, Drake Maye, and Jayden Daniels are unlikely to escape the top 10. A Kansas City Chiefs-like trade up for Patrick Mahomes is probably not going to be in the offing. But the draft offers no guarantees of success. Even first-overall picks fail.
That doesn’t mean they can’t draft somebody like Spencer Rattler or Michael Pratt, as Fittipaldo wrote last week. At that point, though, we are clearly in probably-not-an-upgrade territory.
With Mason Rudolph a pending free agent and Mitch Trubisky a likely salary cap casualty, the Steelers will need to find another quarterback or two at some point this year. Don’t put it past them to use a draft pick on the position. The Steelers have to find some way to give Pickett competition this year, as they said they would.
Pickett is the most likely option to be the Steelers’ starting quarterback in 2024; considerably more likely than a draft pick. Right now he’s the only one you can guarantee to be on the roster. The odds of their going after Justin Fields or Russell Wilson or Kirk Cousins feel low, but you never know.
And there’s nothing saying that a mid-round draft pick can’t possibly develop into a starter. Sure, the good majority of “franchise” quarterbacks are first-round picks. And the good majority of them go early in the round. Invoking Tom Brady’s name doesn’t change the statistics, even if he is arguably the greatest to ever do it.
But drafting a quarterback in the first round doesn’t guarantee you results, either. The Steelers got their pick of all quarterbacks in 2022 as Pickett was the first one drafted. Yet just two years into his career they are already acknowledging he still has a lot of work to do.
They are hoping new offensive coordinator Arthur Smith can get the most out of him. To get out of him what his predecessor, Matt Canada, could not. To get out of him what he got out of Ryan Tannehill with the Tennessee Titans.
If he can’t, then both of them could be looking for new jobs by 2027 or sooner.
