Kenny Pickett

Such is life when drafting a QB in the first round. Far worse decisions have been made by teams drafting in round 1, and just because we got it wrong once doesn't mean we will get it wrong again.

 

I don't think Love is an elite QB, but he's pretty clearly a franchise QB. He's borderline top 10 and someone that is good enough to win with if the roster around him is quality enough.

 

Because the chances of a first round pick at QB being a bust is like 60% or more? Having 3 dudes in a row that hit at that probability is 6%... which means you would expect exactly two teams out of 32 to have that level of success at QB over three consecutive first round collateral at QB.

You can point to evaluation, but even the best talent evaluators are going to get it wrong at QB (and being surrounded by a good team and good org matters so much with this as we've seen QB's leave teams like the Jets, Giants, and Browns only to have great success elsewhere and become franchise guys).

 

Wasn't he the QB that was accused of playing video games instead of the studying the playbook? Or am I misremembering?

 

this is true

 

I hear what you're saying. It's just they could have gotten an anchor on the OL at C for the next decade which was more important than an iffy, small-handed, over-rated QB who wasn't ready to be a starter. The other QBs on the roster at the time were equally capable (which isn't saying much). They may have swung for the fences but they were swinging at the wrong pitch.

 

We'll likely not agree on this and that's ok. Hard for me to imagine that they were only drafting QBs to be backups after Ben. How many former steelers QBs left Pitt and actually did anything elsewhere? I can't think of one and a bunch of them were out of the league soon after getting kicked to the curb by Pitt. Steelers track record of QBs not named Ben or Terry is pretty damn abysmal.

 

I like Mason. I wanted us to keep him to be the likely starter in 2024 (although I didn't think we'd have the chance to bring in Wilson and Fields).

But the funny thing is that we currently have Mason, who we picked up as a cheap journeyman backup.

I think we could have had a late round pick or failed 1st rounder do as well as Mason did on his first contract for us. There wasn't much difference between him and Duck (UDFA) who passed him on the depth chart for a few games. And we got Duck for nothing.

Would things have been appreciably different in 2019 if we kept Dobbs from 2018? Or even if we just extended Landry Jones in 2017 for another 2 years at a low price? I'd imagine that there were also several failed early round QBs we could have picked up on the cheap around the same time period.

 

That is interesting. No guarantees. Brady and Montana were not highly thought of at draft time. I was sure Joe Burrow was destined to be elite and get the Bengals a SB. Still could happen but since the SB loss he can't seem to stay healthy.

Doubt we'll ever see what the 1st round draft produced in 1983. 6 QB's taken with 3 becoming HOFers. And Steelers missed them. I can't remember our draft position but sure it was later. We got big old Gabe Rivera while Marino waited by his phone.

 

That is fine. I still stand behind my points. The only QB's we've drafted after Ben are Pickett and Oladokun. Pickett was to be the starter... he was a bust. Josh Dobbs played well in a few stints on bad teams post-Steelers. He didn't win a lot of games, but not because he didn't put quality enough play on the field for a back up QB. Mason's only play out of Pitt was on the worst team in the NFL. Hard to hold him in too tough a light for his performance (which wasn't really awful anyways).

I can't speak to anything pre mid-90's (which is when I started as a Steeler fan in my youth), but since Ben we haven't really had to try to draft starters. We missed on Pickett.... It happens. We're going to try again soon (maybe as soon as this year).

 

The correct pick would've been Trent McDuffie at CB. We could've taken Linderbaum too, but CB is way more impactful than C. I would've taken McDuffie any day of the week.

 

I would have been OK with that pick too.