Colbert defends selecting Pickett

I get that you like Kenny. Looks like he's a good guy.

But there's basically zero evidence that Kenny would have played as well as Mason in the games Mason played.

I don't think Mason's more than a career backup. But it's unfair to take that stretch of games away from him like that. And it's not like you can go in and change the system in the back 3rd of the season. And we still had the same risk-averse HC after Canada was fired.

Again...if it was the system that held Kenny back, why has been been bad everywhere he goes?

I think it's because
1) He gets hurt too much...in part because his pocket awareness is (very?) bad (spins to his blind side into a DL...again).
2) He's only good at one thing (throws a really nice back shoulder pass), but doesn't have another "club in his bag" when DCs take that away from him.
3) He's not accurate (at least not with us...haven't diligently followed him after he left). I think this is why he's generationally bad at TD%. Sucks at getting "on target" balls to guys in the red zone (where accuracy is critical). IIRC, was usually high and behind. I think this is also a huge reason why he didn't throw over the middle much. He knew that he wasn't good at putting the ball in the right place (except back shoulder down the line, which he was very good at IMO). He also knew that he had a coach who was very risk-averse. So if you're a guy who can't throw TDs, you can't also be a guy who throws lots of picks. So he didn't throw to dangerous parts of the field. Some say this was scheme related. But I don't think this is true because both Mitch and Mason threw over the middle. But bad over the middle throws are why Mitch got benched. And better over the middle throws are why Mason didn't go back to the bench after Kenny was healthy.

Nice things to say about Kenny:
1) He's tough. I loved it when he got smacked (can't remember the defender), but he popped right back up jawing at the guy. I was like "that's a Steeler!".
2) Doesn't fold in tough situations. That pass to Najee was a beautiful play. Probably the best play for both of them in a Steelers uniform.

 

It was a bad pick in hindsight. Pickett is struggling to be a backup, while his draft mate in that "weak" QB class.... Malik Willis just got a fat contract with Dolphins.

 

And plenty of teams and pre draft evaluation places had KP pegged as a 3rd or 4th round pick career backup.

He was a surprisingly polarizing player. I’d be interested to know more about how and why the two pretty different conclusions about KP as a prospect were reached.

Did anyone in the Steelers organization see KP as a backup caliber QB?

It would be fascinating to know.

 

Go back and look through the mock drafts that year. The overwhelming majority had Pickett in the first round. Hell, some had him in the top 10.

I'm still annoyed they didn't take Linderbaum instead. Build the line first, then go get the quarterback. That's not a knock on Frazier, but the Steelers left themselves with a disaster at center for years.

 

I'm not sure we know if any teams had him evaluated that way, just as we don't know for certain if another team would have taken him late in the first or early in the second round if the Steelers had passed.

 

Here's the thing. I don't like Pickett all that much. I didn't want the Steelers to draft any of the quarterbacks in the first round that year. I wanted Linderbaum. What I do have is limited tolerance for the fiction written on the topic on this board, especially by a couple of trolls.

There is evidence that Pickett would have been successful during that late stretch of games. The offense had its best game to that point in the season with Pickett at quarterback the week after they fired Canada. We never got to see his progression from there.

Rudolph was very good against a horrid Bengals defense. They could not cover Pickens. He was behind the secondary all day. Rudolph missed him when he was wide open behind everyone at least twice, and Pickens bailed him out of a poor throw with a circus catch on another one. Then the running game dominated the next week. He made one very good throw in the rain against the Ravens. It's not like he played like an All-Pro.

I agree that he gets hurt too much. Whether he is somehow causing is speculation at best.

I disagree with your take that he was only good at one thing. In college, he was very good at attacking the middle of the field. A few of his best throws as a pro came on exactly those sorts of throws, but the Steelers rarely let him make dangerous throws unless it was late in a half. I think that is why he was a quarterback who couldn't throw touchdowns. What quarterback is going to do that very often when his coaching staff takes his aggressiveness away?

To be fair, that's just my theory, but it fits with everything we've seen from Tomlin during and since Pickett's time. He was willing to trust an old guy like Wilson or Rodgers, but not younger ones like Pickett and Fields.

 

If you don’t want to get pooped on don’t run and hide in an outhouse

 

What some mock draft think are sometimes different that what GM can think....I mean in the mock draft last season,so many had Sanders as a first round QB and he was drafted in the 5th round

 

I'd suggest that you take a look at Kenny's game against Cincy the season before when Canada was the OC.

Kenny only played two games against Cincy when he was with the Steelers. The results are similar (with and without Canada)

2022 (w Canada): 25/42, 59.5%, 265 yards, 1 TD, 0 INT, 6.3 Y/A, 6.8 AY/A, 58.9 QB Rate, 2 sacks (https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/P/PickKe00/gamelog/2022/)
2023 (ex Canada): 24/33, 72.7%, 278 yards, 0 TD, 0 INT, 8.4 Y/A. 8.4 AY/A, 97.8 QB Rate, 2 sacks (https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/P/PickKe00/gamelog/2023/)

If you look, you'll also notice that Muth tends to have most of his good games against Cincy. It's only two games (Kenny+Much vs Cincy), so it's hard to say that these two things are super-correlated. But these are Muth's biggest yardage games of both seasons.

And Muth's high output against Cincy isn't just a Kenny thing. In 24, Muth's two biggest yardage games were both against Cincy. In 25, his biggest game was also against Cincy. So I think what we're seeing here is that Cincy doesn't have an answer for covering Muth (or just that we only remember Muth is on the team against Cincy).

I think this suggests that the reason Kenny had a good game against Cincy without Canada was because he was playing Cincy (who doesn't cover Muth). Not because Canada wasn't the OC. Because his game against Cincy with Canada in 2022 was pretty similar. We seem to have a schematic advantage against Cincy

I think looking at the actual game also hurts the idea that "Mason only did well because we played bad defenses". People who are trying to defend Kenny here tend to be pretty quick to talk about the quality of competition Mason faced (and they often neglect to mention that the Baltimore game was played in horrible conditions for passing). They also often forget to mention that the "good" game for Kenny post Canada was against Cincy. And they were pretty bad defensively too (31st in total yards allowed, 28th in pass yards allowed, 26th in rush yards allowed, 21st in points allowed...notice Kenny didn't throw a TD in this one).

Did you know that one of the bad defenses Mason played against was Cincy? How did they compare defensively to the Cincy team that Kenny played against?

The other was SEA. They averaged 0.8 point more points allowed than Cincy. And 3.2 fewer yards per game than Cincy.

Maybe Kenny could have played as well as Mason. But the fact that he was outplayed (or at least played to a draw) by a guy everyone knows is a career backup isn't a good thing for Kenny.

I've never argued that this showed that Mason was good. My argument (here and elsewhere) was that the fact that they played to a draw at best meant that Kenny's career as a starter in the NFL was over.

If you'll notice, that's what I said in the post above. Outplayed or played to a draw with the QB3 on every team he's played on.

 

Is this Confucius? It sounds like very wise advice.

 

I think it's just that QBs always get over drafted.

So he had a later grade based on skill. But a high grade based on demand for the position, especially in a very bad draft class.

I think the Steelers also love the story line type things (see: blood lines + Heidenreich). Kenny was "local" because he played college ball in the same building. They likely knew him very well and he sounds like a good person. And I'm sure Art was thinking about Marino too.

But mostly, I think it was some significant need, Colbert + Steelers feeling like they had to draft a QB come hell or high water, and the QB class being really bad.

 

That’s all true.

But I’m more talking about some of the publicly available scouting breakdowns from supposedly knowledgeable folks were really split. Some saw a top tier franchise guy worth any pick. Some saw a guy who should only be asked to start games in an emergency.

It would be interesting to hear the two sides outline how they got to such different positions.

 

Who played well in Matt Canadas system? Russ for a few games with his moonballs to the sideline before that got taken away? MR for a few games at the end of 23? KP looked good in 22 before they shackled him with the first or second read and took away the ability to audible. In addition to his center, Mason Cole unable to hold his ground? The line play was horrible in 23.

where has he been since? Backup in philly, then cleveland and the raiders: not exactly places where Qb’s have done well.

i think ours was a system issue, at least in part. Hopefully that gets fixed this year

 

I wonder why Colbert brought this up now

I realize he was on a radio show, but why was he even doing that now

 

I suspect he still would have gotten his trade wish because Tomlin wanted volunteers not hostages

 

ESPN has Carolina as the best fit for drafting Sorsby

Now that would be another kick in the nuts to KtCP

 

It was Smith our OC when Russell Wilson was the QB....Canada was fired after 10 games in 2023

 

Was about to point this out. Canada was long gone by the time Wilson arrived.

 

Some QB needy teams passed on KP. What did they see that the Steelers didn't?

Texans - with a very mediocre Davis Mills said 'no thanks'
Giants - with a struggling Daniel Jones said 'nope'
Jets - with flawed Zach Wilson said 'nah, we're good'...
Falcons - with Ryan obviously at the end of his career said 'we'll wait for better'

 

Part of this is probably that the opportunity cost is higher the earlier that you pick in the draft.

I think it would have been interesting to see what we would have done if KP had been picked earlier.

We kind of know that we weren't "in love" with the Pickett pick. Because if we really thought he was going to be a franchise QB - when we had significant need and there was a significant drop off after KP - then we would have traded up.

 

We weren't talking about GMs. We were talking about the inaccurate claim that only a small handful of people thought Pickett was going to go in the first round.

 

I think it would have been more interesting where he gets picked if the Steelers hadn't grabbed him in Rd1. In an 'average' QB draft class I would guess that he would have been a solid 3rd round pick (which ends up what the Steelers got for him!).

 

The Texans had the No. 3 overall pick. Nobody was taking Pickett that high.

The Giants thought they could fix Daniel Jones. In fact, they gave him a new four-year deal in 2023. You may wish to disagree with that approach, but they clearly didn't think they needed to draft a quarterback in the first round.

The Jets drafted Zach Wilson No. 2 overall in 2021 and you think they were going to give up on him and take another quarterback No. 10 overall the following year? Come on. At least try to be serious.

Why would you try to apply logic to the Falcons? Also, the Falcons traded Matt Ryan before the 2022 draft, so you might want to do some research before you post stuff like this.