How long will it take for Steelers Kenny Pickett to break Big Ben's records?
4th quarter comebacks and game-winning drives
Big Ben, if anything else, was one of the best at engineering 4th quarter comebacks with 41 and 53 game-winning drives. While you would rather Kenny Pickett not be in the situations he has to engineer those kinds of drives, it will happen. Kenny did show an eerie resemblance to Big Ben in that department, engineering three 4th quarter comebacks and four game-winning drives in his first season.
If Kenny averages three 4th quarter comebacks a season, he can surpass Ben Roethlisberger's total in 13.66 seasons. If he maintains four 4th quarter comebacks a year, he can reach Big Ben's total in 13.25 seasons. Oddly quite attainable if he's able to play 14 seasons. Considering Big Ben averaged 2.27 4th quarter comebacks a season and 2.94 game-winning drives a season, Kenny Pickett is off to a good start in that department.
Sacks
The next stat category is sacks and interceptions. One of the metrics we hope Pickett does not surpass. Even if he has a long career as Big Ben did. Over the 18 years, Big Ben sometimes played with a porous offensive line. Especially between 2006 and 2014, he was sacked 366 times. He averaged a whopping 41.6 sacks a season.
The Steelers, in 2015, signed a 6'9 277 lb tackle, Alejandro Villanueva. The number of times he was sacked plummeted to 97 or 16.2 sacks a season. Get a giant tackle with an attitude, and the sack rate plummeted. Who knows how many yards could have passed for if the Steelers had only gotten a big tackle or two at the start of his career in 2004 or 2005?
Fast forward to Kenny Pickett; he was sacked 27 times during his rookie season, and what did the Steelers do? Drafted another giant tackle Broderick Jones and to hedge their bets, added Darnell Washington, a massive tight end. That should considerably drop Kenny's sack rate. If Pickett even was sacked 27 times a season going forward, it would still take 20.14 seasons to surpass, and with the addition of the 2023 draft class, Kenny Pickett should never come close to 544 sacks.