An in-depth review of Steelers Kenny Pickett’s rookie season
By Andrew Falce
There was a lot of bad with his rookie season
While I do think Pickett got better as the season progressed, there were still a lot of issues that will need to be addressed heading into year two. To me, the worst element of his game was his medium-to-long accuracy. He was consistently off the mark there, and while it wasn’t always costly, it did the offense no favors.
Especially over the final stretch of games, it seemed like every time Pickett threw a pass more than 10 yards past the line of scrimmage, it was a fifty/fifty shot if it would be a catchable pass. For every decent pass, there was one that was wildly off the mark. This team has an up-and-coming premier threat in George Pickens at the helm. Pickett will need to be better at those passes.
The deep accuracy isn’t all that surprising considering Pickett’s arm strength isn’t anything special. He doesn’t have the proverbial cannon of an arm others are blessed with. That hasn’t stopped the likes of Joe Burrow from succeeding. That said, Burrow is extremely accurate, and that is something Pickett will have to get to.
As well, Pickett was awful at progressing through reads. More often than not, he would stare down his primary target and force the throw to them as opposed to progressing through his reads. This isn’t the end of the world; a lot of rookies struggle with this, but Pickett will need to show the ability to get through his reads and make the best decision with the ball.
My biggest issue with Pickett is that he never really ended up being a huge difference-maker for the team. Seeing him calm his game down and become a less turnover-prone quarterback was great, but he never had that amazing game where he took control of the offense and put up big stats.
No, stats aren’t everything, but Pickett only threw for over 200 yards in four games, and he never had multiple passing scores in one outing. While the run game became the focus of this offense down the stretch, it would have been nice to see Pickett carve a defense on occasion. Him lacking that one true star-studded game is a hard pill to swallow moving forward.