Less than two full years after being the Pittsburgh Steelers’ first-round draft pick to be their future of the quarterback position, QB Kenny Pickett was traded to the Philadelphia Eagles. Reports that have since surfaced indicate that he was unhappy with the addition of Russell Wilson and that he felt misled about the nature of the quarterback competition, which led him to request a trade out of Pittsburgh.
In his introductory press conference with the Eagles, he was asked about those reports of him handling the Wilson addition poorly.
“I think the communication, it is what it is, it was behind closed doors. I am confident in the way I handled it. I handled it the way I should have handled it,” Pickett said in the press conference posted on NBC Sports Philadelphia’s YouTube page. “I’m excited to be here. It worked out so well that Philly was the place I ended up landing in, so I think everything happens for a reason.”
Without getting into the specifics of the “behind closed doors” conversations, Pickett appears to be doubling down on the fact that he feels he was slighted by the team. On one hand, it is hard to blame him for feeling a certain type of way. He spent basically his entire time in Pittsburgh under OC Matt Canada’s abysmal offensive system. And no player likes the feeling of losing their job during an injury. That being said, he didn’t handle the circumstances all that well.
His play did nothing to elevate the team, and when circumstances got difficult, he frowned in the face of adversity. Whether or not he refused to suit up to be the backup in Week 17 against the Seattle Seahawks, he didn’t handle questions about being benched the way a leader should. For example, at one point he was asked if being on the sideline gave any opportunity for additional learning, to which he replied, “No.”
He was asked about the Seahawks game situation by a member of the Philadelphia media.
“I think that goes back to a lot of the communication behind closed doors, that didn’t go the way I feel like they went, how it was getting released,” Pickett said in a clip from the conference posted by Eliot Shorr-Parks on X. “There was a plan for that game. It went down exactly the way it was planned to go down that entire week. I was coming off the ankle surgery, so it is what it is.”
This chapter in Pittsburgh sports came to an abrupt end. Just a month ago at the 2024 NFL Scouting Combine, GM Omar Khan expressed full faith in Pickett. Now he is playing for another NFL team. We may never learn the specifics of everything that went down, but Pickett sure seems glad to be out of town. Both sides now get a fresh start without the pressure that the first-round label can create.
