Yes, I’m afraid we’re going to talk about former Pittsburgh Steelers QB Kenny Pickett one more (last?) time. They obliged his trade request after signing Russell Wilson, and since then, various reports surfaced about how things devolved.
Finally, somebody in the know opted to say the obvious on the record. Ray Fittipaldo joined the PM Team on 93.7 The Fan on Thursday to address the recent back-and-forth about Pickett. Initiated by his personal quarterbacks coach shooting back at negative reports about his client, the beat writer also addressed remarks recently made by Mike Florio in response.
“It definitely does depend on who you’re talking to within that organization,” Fittipaldo said about what story you will get about how Kenny Pickett’s relationship with the Steelers deteriorated. “[There are some] who will have Kenny’s back, and they’ll tell you, ‘Yeah, there were other people in that building who were talking bad about him.’ I don’t know if I want to go as far as character assassination, but the Steelers definitely got their word out there pretty quickly on what they wanted the narrative to be.”
Fittipaldo and his Pittsburgh Post-Gazette colleague, Gerry Dulac, take center stage in this part of the story. They were the ones primarily responsible for serving as the Steelers’ mouthpiece in the Pickett aftermath. Both of them even at times seemed to take it personally. Whatever people in the building told them about Pickett, it painted him as a petulant kid, it seems.
Yet upon the light of day, Fittipaldo knows that isn’t the full story. It’s quite possible that Pickett canceled a planned workout after learning about the Wilson trade, and he also acknowledged that he requested a trade. But not everyone in the Steelers organization wanted to take a scorched-earth strategy.
“There are still some people in that building that believe Kenny [Pickett] was better than what he was, in terms of how he handled himself on that exit,” Fittipaldo said. “Then you talk to other people and they’ll swear up and down that Kenny handled the whole thing poorly. Honestly, it just depends on which source you want to talk to inside that building.”
Issues started toward the end of last season after Pickett suffered an ankle injury. He did not seem to take Mason Rudolph’s success particularly well, offering some questionable answers to reporters’ questions. His body language on the sideline was not indicative of a leader, but rather of somebody who knows he lost his job.
As for everything else, one can likely chalk it up to miscommunication or misunderstanding. I think that is the true story about why Pickett did not dress for one game as the emergency quarterback. The Steelers thought he would, he thought he wouldn’t. On the day of the game, he wasn’t prepared to play, and would have needed injections just to suit up.
I’m sure there were miscommunications as the Steelers pursued Wilson, as well. Wilson basically announced to the world that he was signing with the Steelers over social media. He reached out to Pickett, but we don’t know exactly how that went down.
Did the Steelers tell Pickett that Wilson is the starter, or did they tell him he would be competing? We’re probably never going to have clarity on that. Quite possibly, Pickett interpreted certain remarks to mean that he would not have the opportunity to compete, while Mike Tomlin felt he was communicating otherwise.
Reporters such as Fittipaldo and Dulac maintained that the Steelers never told Pickett he would not be competing. Others who clearly had different sources claimed that is exactly what the Steelers told Pickett.
The bottom line is that this is a grey area that we probably never resolve. All we know is that Pickett’s departure from Pittsburgh got muddy. Fittipaldo explicitly talking about how the Steelers got their side of the story out there quickly is telling, especially since he was one of the messengers.
