Kenny Pickett, the No. 20 choice and quarterback owner Art Rooney II presented on April 29, 2022, as the guy who smashed all of Dan Marino’s collegiate records, is no longer with us, six hundred and eighty-seven days after he was selected.
Traded to Philadelphia, sources told ESPN’s Adam Schefter, Pickett’s departure doesn’t portend a total change in the traditional, devoted organization’s mindset, hours after the Pittsburgh Steelers welcomed Russell Wilson into their facility. If anything, it serves to emphasize the central idea of the brand. It also acknowledges the organization’s error.
Restricted by a skill level that was below his selection choice and obstinate decision-makers who intervened too late, Pickett asked for a trade in order to voice his dissatisfaction with Wilson’s signing. It marked the end of an era that ought never to have begun, according to some.
But Pickett is not the main cause of the issue; rather, it is the organization’s failure to create a clear succession plan for Ben Roethlisberger.
The Steelers’ pursuit of historical phantoms prevented them from effectively preparing for the future; instead, they chose to perpetuate the organization’s past errors and cling to its heyday.
And now, two years after the much-anticipated retirement of quarterback Roethlisberger, the club finds itself back where it wanted to be: virtually at the beginning.
By signing Wilson, the catalyst for Pickett’s trek across the Commonwealth, the Steelers avoid having to rebuild from the ground up. Wilson’s prime is beyond him at 35, but he can still be a reliable bridge quarterback—especially after a season in which he tossed 26 touchdowns and eight interceptions. At a press appearance on Friday, he said that he “felt like myself again.”
It’s the kind of action that the Steelers probably ought to have taken two years ago to avoid selecting a quarterback in a historically poor class of signal-callers in the draft. And they nearly did, but the team undermined the veteran by selecting Pickett less than two months after inking former first-round selection Mitch Trubisky to a low two-year deal.
Naturally, if the Steelers had committed any major draft money to the quarterback position, they could have avoided that situation. Rather, in 2018, the club used a third-round selection to choose Mason Rudolph. Furthermore, the organization did not utilize a subsequent choice on a quarterback until after Roethlisberger’s formal retirement on January 16, 2022, after a wild-card defeat to the Kansas City Chiefs. Roethlisberger had shown contempt for Rudolph’s decision. Despite playing in the 2020 and 2021 seasons after missing the whole 2019 season due to elbow surgery, it was obvious that Roethlisberger’s time was running out.
However, the club essentially let Roethlisberger to choose how his career ended. Rudolph and previous first-round pick Dwayne Haskins were the team’s quarterbacks when Roethlisberger eventually announced his retirement. In March 2022, Trubisky was signed by the club. Tragically, Haskins passed only a month later. He had begun his career with Washington and had showed some potential with a new start.
If the Steelers had selected a different quarterback in the draft that year, the formula may have worked. Like Patrick Mahomes shadowing Alex Smith for a season, Trubisky might have started for a season while a youngster matured in the background and finally took over in his second season. But giving up the city’s adopted son and Pitt football icon for a valuable first-round pick? Trubisky had no chance at all.
The cheers for Pickett began as soon as St. Vincent College’s training camp opened, and four weeks into the season, Tomlin benched Trubisky in favor of Pickett at halftime, thereby ending the rookie’s debut as the starting quarterback without fanfare. In his first year, Pickett showed flashes of brilliance, spearheading three fourth-quarter comebacks and displaying moxie and intangibles that hinted the Steelers could have discovered a winning formula. But the fairy dust ran out after what proved to be a fools’ gold preseason. Rudolph on the field to open a playoff game, and Pickett finished his time as a Steelers player on the bench.
Building a stronger future from the ruins of the Pickett disaster presents a chance for the Steelers.
The Steelers are free of the weight of a first-round quarterback who fails to live up to expectations with Pickett gone. The clock is no longer running down until May 2025, when the club must decide whether to exercise his fifth-year option.
Rather, the club only has one quarterback on the field, and that quarterback helped his expected successor in Denver, Jarrett Stidham, get ready for his Broncos debut on Friday afternoon. He also took time to share his happiness about coaching younger teammates.
A previous first-round pick in quarterbacking who would gain from a year spent under the tutelage of a model professional and Super Bowl-winning signal-caller also happens to be available for trade. Through the trade of Pickett, the Steelers created the possibility of a trade for quarterback Justin Fields of the Chicago Bears, something that was virtually unheard of when the team—and most recently, general manager Omar Khan—expressed their “full faith” in their own young, domestic quarterback.
Now that Pickett is gone, the Steelers can let go of the pretenses and move ahead with a clear plan free of any baggage from the past, rather than trying to make things better.
Khan has shown in the two years after taking control after the 2022 draft that he is capable of defying Steelers customs by making high-profile transactions and signings of free agents both during the draft and at the deadline. Just a few breaths after declaring his belief in Pickett two weeks before in Indianapolis, Khan added that there would be “strong competition” for the job. While Khan smiled in response to questions from reporters on potential free agency quarterback signings or big-ticket trades, he made it apparent that he had “an obligation to look at every avenue that’s out there to try to make us a better football team.”
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