The Pittsburgh Steelers selected Kenny Pickett in the first round of the 2022 NFL Draft. That decision is looking like the best option this team could have made.
When Kenny Pickett was taken by the Pittsburgh Steelers with the 20th overall pick in the 2022 NFL Draft, it’s safe to say that the fanbase was split. Many fans were in his corner after watching him at Pitt, while others were more than a little concerned about outliers like his historically small hands and one year of quality production in five seasons.
However, when we look back at the alternatives Pittsburgh could have pursued during the 2022 free agency period, it becomes increasingly clear that Pickett was the right answer if the Steelers insisted on making a move for a quarterback.
We ran the scenarios, and even though we can’t watch it play out differently, it would be extremely hard to justify that any other move for a QB would have been better than their decision to select Pickett in 2022. Here are all three alternative scenarios:
Trading for a QB would have worked out poorly for the Steelers
Shortly after Ben Roethlisberger announced his retirement, there was an incredibly large group of fans who were banging the table for Pittsburgh to trade for a veteran quarterback during the 2022 offseason. The Steelers had just made the playoffs at 9-7-1, and many thought this team just needed to make a few more moves to be true playoff contenders.
We knew that there was a good chance the Seahawks and Russell Wilson were going to want a mutual parting, and we thought that there was a possibility that Derek Carr and even Aaron Rodgers could be dealt for the right price. However, these potential trades would have set the Steelers back by years.
Both Wilson and Carr were huge disappointments in 2022. Carr was benched by the Raiders for the final two games of the season while Wilson’s contract is already looking like one of the worst in the history of the league.
Rodgers would have been the only possible outcome that could have potentially yielded better results, but he is now 39 years old and it would have required multiple first-round picks to acquire him. The decision to take Kenny Pickett is certainly looking better than any trade for a veteran the Steelers could have made last offseason.
Drafting any other QB looks like it would have been a mistake
If the Pittsburgh Steelers weren’t going to go the trade route and were insistent on finding a quarterback in the NFL Draft, it’s hard to argue that they should have taken anybody else. If you recall, Malik Willis was the name commonly linked to this team, and he was the player that most fans wanted.
Willis was said to have the highest upside in the class thanks to his whip of an arm and excellent running ability. However, the former Liberty QB and Auburn Transfer was remarkably raw and simply wasn’t a good passer in college. In his three starts in the NFL, Willis looked abysmal trying to run an offense, and the Titans ultimately resorted to journeyman and former Steelers QB, Josh Dobbs.
Willis isn’t the only QB selection who would have been worse than Pickett. Fans were split on this quarterback class as some preferred players like Cincinnati’s Desmond Ridder, Ole Miss’s Matt Corral, or North Carolina’s Sam Howell. Though we don’t know yet how these quarterbacks will turn out, Corral had a disappointing season before landing on IR, Ridder struggled after becoming a starter, and Howell fell all the way to the fifth round as teams viewed him as a backup.
This isn’t to say that it’s impossible for a QB from the 2022 draft class to become a better football player in the future, but based on what we’ve seen at this point, taking anyone else certainly seems like it would have been the wrong decision.
Waiting until the 2023 NFL Draft is still very much a mystery
One of the biggest arguments against taking a quarterback in 2022 is that the draft class did not consist of a strong group of quarterbacks and many believed 2023 will be much better. While I have no doubt that 2023 will produce a better QB class as a whole, finding a franchise guy was still very much a big risk.
Most believe that Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud are going to go very early in the draft, and each has their own issues that prevent them from being can’t-miss prospects. Young is going to be incredibly undersized, while Stroud really doesn’t have any defining traits.
Even if these two players prove to be successful, the Steelers weren’t likely to end up with a top draft choice to take one of them. If they missed out on the top two quarterbacks, they would have to look at passers with big red flags like Will Levis, Anthony Richardson, or Hendon Hooker. Levis and Richardson had a disappointing season statistically, while Hooker is a former transfer who will be recovering from an ACL tear.
On top of this, Levis and Hooker will be just as old as Kenny Pickett coming out of college with plenty of risks of their own. Perhaps the Pittsburgh Steelers will someday regret not waiting until 2023 to take a QB in the draft, but they certainly wouldn’t have been guaranteed to get a better player than Pickett.