The question of who will win the Steelers’ quarterback competition has been asked ad nauseam since the night they drafted Kenny Pickett in the first round. But what about the question of how the job will be won?
In general, the Venn diagram of Pickett and Mitch Trubisky has more in the middle than it does on the outsides, but what we’re going to do here is analyze what might separate the two as players. And that’s going beyond the obvious — one is a five-year NFL veteran, the other is a rookie. Physically, the tale of the tape is strikingly similar.
Trubisky is 6-foot-2, 220 pounds; Pickett is listed at 6-3 and the same weight. Athletically, Trubisky ran a 4.67-second 40-yard dash at the NFL combine five years ago, while Pickett ran a 4.73 this past March. Trubisky posted a time of 4.25 in the 20-yard shuttle run, Pickett a 4.29. Pickett out-jumped Trubisky, 33 1/2 to 27 1/2, in the vertical leap and broad-jumped five inches farther.
So with all those tangibles difficult to differentiate, we turned to a few experts who have watched, studied and discussed both quarterbacks extensively to pinpoint where one has an advantage over the other and vice versa.
Louis Riddick, ESPN analyst
For starters, Riddick insists his outlook on the Steelers’ quarterback position, and by extension Pickett, is not compromised by his alma mater. Riddick is a Pitt man but said he has no problem being objective when it comes to this conversation.
What Riddick sees in Trubisky versus Pickett are the same broad strokes that will pop up again as we delve into further analysis of the two combatants.
“They’re very similar in terms of their athleticism,” Riddick told the Post-Gazette in May, when he still was a candidate to succeed Kevin Colbert as Steelers general manager. “Mitch is probably a little bit faster, maybe a little bit thicker at this point, although I believe Kenny is taller. I don’t know if Mitchell’s as good in the pocket as far as being a drop-back passer as Kenny is. On first and second down, Trubisky can give you problems, now. Especially when you’re talking about the RPO game, run-pass option, getting him out on the perimeter — I mean, he can turn into a running back.
“Don’t ever count Kenny out in that matter, either. You saw what happened against Wake in the bowl game. Minus the fake slide, whatever you want to call it, he can run. But Kenny is a great thrower from the pocket. If it’s third down and a team knows you have to throw the football, he can really dice you up.”
Charles Davis, CBS analyst
The Steelers face the Lions in their third preseason game, and longtime NFL broadcaster Charles Davis will be on the call. As he sees it, if Pickett is playing in that final exhibition and Trubisky isn’t, we’ll know who got the gig.
But for those penciling in Trubisky as the starter, Davis offers words of caution: “Without knowing exactly what Kevin Colbert, Mike Tomlin, Omar Khan and crew were thinking, to me, you don’t draft a quarterback in the first round these days — I don’t care what number — unless you’re expecting him to play.”
Like Riddick, Davis was a big fan of Pickett this past season and going into the draft. He saw a fifth-year senior who benefited greatly from returning to school and improving with more seasoning — the kind of experience that Trubisky didn’t have when he entered the league.
“What I like about Trubisky is he’s a very serious-minded young man. I’ve had a lot of games with him and been around him,” Davis said. “He loves ball, cares about it a lot.”
Davis also pointed to Trubisky’s preseason game last year against his old team when he played loose and pressure-free to the tune of 221 yards, one touchdown and zero interceptions on 20-of-28 passing. Trubisky has offered nothing but rave reviews of what amounted to his NFL redshirt year in 2021 with the Bills. He’s been subtle about it, but Trubisky has made it clear that the quarterback room in Buffalo — and the entire offense, really — was in good working order when compared to a Bears situation.
Davis correctly projected Pickett to Pittsburgh in his first mock draft for NFL.com. Now, he’s seeing it more in the college ranks, and like many other observers, he threw out Joe Burrow’s rapid ascent while explaining why Pickett’s was no fluke.
“His decision-making sped up. His process got faster, but not out of control; he was totally in control of his process,” Davis said.
Lastly, Davis is asked to put a finger on which quarterback has the higher upside, the soon-to-be-28-year-old Trubisky or recently-turned-24 Pickett. His overarching thought is that the “ceiling” discussion too often gravitates toward athletic attributes. In that sense, he doesn’t see much growth potential in Pickett as a five-year college player.
Chris Simms, NBC analyst
Riddick and Davis are well-versed in NFL circles and spend more time around the league than just about any media members throughout a season. But now, we enter our “quarterback guru” phase of comparing and contrasting Trubisky and Pickett.
Simms, the son of Phil who was a third-round pick in 2003 before bouncing around the NFL for eight years and having a cup of coffee as a Patriots assistant, ranks the top 40 quarterbacks each offseason. He explains his rationale in great detail. And going back to draft time, Simms was not in the camp that believes the Steelers took Pickett too early. Based on conversations he had and things he knew about teams around the league, Simms thinks someone would’ve jumped at the chance to take Pickett at the top of the second round, at the latest.
“He’s a good athlete with a good arm. None of it’s great, but it’s all good,” Simms said on his post-draft podcast, also comparing Pickett to Jones, the 15th overall pick last year by Bill Belichick.
He views the Steelers as a team that’s not far off from competing with the top of the AFC, and as an organization that won’t feel “the pressure or the politics” to turn things over to the first-rounder. Beyond that, Simms is also just bullish on Trubisky as a player rather than a punching bag to take some heat off Pickett early in the season.
“I’ve been a defender of Mitchell Trubisky for a while. I have,” Simms said on a later episode. “But at the same time, I’m not just going, ‘Oh, it’s all Matt Nagy.’ There’s flaws with Trubisky. There are things where it’s, ‘Oh, [crap], maybe I don’t know, maybe he’s — sorry — stupid or maybe he is just that inaccurate or has no clue.’
“But what happens? He goes to a new place with a new regime [in Buffalo], you start to hear from them, ‘This guy’s good, he’s smart, he picked up our offense in a hurry.’ … Then you get to see it in the preseason and you go, ‘Well, damn, this is a different guy’ right away. There’s mechanical things that were fixed there. He obviously was in a better spot mentally and he was in an offense that actually gave him a chance and gave him some thought process.”
Basically, Simms is buying Trubisky’s re-Bill-ding year in a big way. The conclusion he came to is that most of Trubisky’s problems with the Bears were not his fault, evidenced by rumors he’s heard, Trubisky’s limited action last season and how Chicago continued to struggle with Andy Dalton, Nick Foles and Justin Fields at quarterback in 2021 with the same coaching staff.
