In the lexicon of professional football, the relationship between a franchise and a franchise quarterback is often viewed as a marriage, right or wrong.
Sometimes, those marriages lead to incredibly happy days with lots of jewelry. Marriages like Tom Brady and the Patriots, Terry Bradshaw and the Steelers, Joe Montana and the 49ers, and Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs come to mind when talking about plenty of jewelry in those marriages.
But more often than not, those marriages are complicated, can get quite messy and wind up in, well, divorce.
Knowing that, The Ringer’s Danny Heifetz took a shot at ranking the 2024 NFL Quarterback Commitment Index, taking a look at which NFL teams are close to finding their perfect match and which are out there looking for an upgrade this offseason.
Unsurprisingly, the Steelers are still looking for that upgrade, and for Heifetz, they shouldn’t have settled for the “boy next door,” that being Kenny Pickett coming out of the University of Pittsburgh. Doing so now has the Steelers in a tough situation: needing to give Pickett a chance with new offensive coordinator Arthur Smith but still searching for competition at the position.
“The Steelers married the boy next door—literally. When Pickett was at the University of Pittsburgh, he shared a football practice facility with the Steelers. Pittsburgh is a famously loyal town, and it fell in love with the work ethic of the kid it already knew,” Heifetz writes. “But after a while, people grow apart. And when you compare this childhood crush to all the other fish in the sea, this looks less like a catch and more like one worth throwing back into the water.
“There are a lot of fish in the sea—perhaps the Steelers shouldn’t have gotten married to the first fish they saw.”
Sharing the same facility with the Pitt Panthers and seeing Pickett’s work ethic and leadership daily certainly played a role in the Steelers feeling more than comfortable selecting him at No. 20 overall in the 2022 NFL Draft, keeping him in the Steel City.
But maybe that clouded their judgement just a bit? It’s certainly possible.
Since making him a first-round pick and the first quarterback off the board in a poor QB class in 2022, Pickett has struggled at the NFL level. Though he is 14-10 as a starter and has had plenty of late-game heroics, he’s been very inconsistent with his accuracy, has poor pocket presence and just has not been able to connect consistently with his receiving options in the passing game.
He has just 13 touchdowns and 13 interceptions in 25 NFL games, has thrown for 300 yards just once and has just one multi-touchdown passing game.
It was also rather damning how good the Steelers’ offense looked once Mason Rudolph took over in Week 16 last season compared to what it looked like with Pickett and backup quarterback Mitch Trubisky.
Now, with the offseason underway, the Steelers are still viewing Pickett as QB1 leading into OTAs, but they are searching to bring in competition to push — and potentially replace — Pickett, whether that’s re-signing Rudolph or adding the likes of Ryan Tannehill, Jacoby Brissett, Russell Wilson or even Justin Fields.
The Steelers needed an answer at quarterback following the retirement of Ben Roethlisberger entering the 2022 offseason. But they should have expanded their horizon outside of the boy next door, as Heifetz says.
