Even after trading him, Omar Khan believes Kenny Pickett will be a successful quarterback. To hear him tell it, the Pittsburgh Steelers didn’t plan or intend to move Pickett. But when he wanted to go somewhere else, in the team’s “volunteers not hostages” mentality, Pickett got his wish.
Speaking with the media during this week’s NFL Owners Meetings in Orlando, Khan said he still has “a lot of faith” in Pickett.
“I think he’s got a big future,” Khan said via Steelers.com’s Dale Lolley.
Per Lolley, Khan acknowledged that making these moves wasn’t part of the team’s initial plan.
“I couldn’t have foreseen that things would go the way they did.”
“If you would have told me a month ago in Indy that we’d be here and Russell Wilson and Justin Fields would be our quarterbacks, I’d say, I’d be a little bit surprised,” Khan would tell Lolley in a fuller quote posted to the team website.
Pittsburgh spent the bulk of the offseason, January and February, talking about Pickett’s play. Mike Tomlin said he believed the Steelers’ 2024 starting quarterback was on its 2023 roster. The team expressed confidence in Pickett’s ability to bounce back after a tough 2023 season while ownership downplayed the idea of making a splash trade for a quarterback.
In the end, the Steelers radically changed their quarterback room. All three members of the 2023 roster will play elsewhere in 2024. Mitch Trubisky is back in Buffalo, Mason Rudolph inked a one-year deal in Tennessee, and Pickett was dealt to Philadelphia.
Taking their place are Russell Wilson and Justin Fields. Wilson was the first addition, agreeing to terms before free agency began, and appears to be the catalyst to the Pickett trade. After learning Wilson would be the frontrunner for the starting quarterback job, Pickett asked to be traded, a report confirmed by Tomlin, who said Pickett asked for a “change of scenery.”
With just one quarterback on the roster, the Steelers re-explored a trade for Fields, acquiring him one day after shipping out Pickett. The cost was cheap, a 2025 conditional sixth round selection that becomes a fourth if Fields plays at least 51 percent of the team’s 2024 offensive snaps.
Pickett is now an Eagle, just over an hour away from his New Jersey hometown. He grew up an Eagles fan and in his introductory press conference last week, said he was happy to start fresh. But he’ll be the obvious backup behind starting QB Jalen Hurts and only play if an injury occurs. In Pittsburgh, he would’ve had at least a chance to compete for the job but it’s clear his feeling was that the Steelers were ready to move on. And he chose not to hang around and find out.
As Mike Tomlin says, have a plan but be light on your feet. The Steelers’ plan, in some fashion, included Pickett. But when that wasn’t tenable, they were quick to make a move, and have re-tooled their quarterback room for the better.
