Steelers Trade Kenny

Nearly 8:00pm, packing for a trip, listening to Numbers On The Board podcast. Though it’s been a crazy NFL free agency period, my mind is more focused on the upcoming baseball season as well as the NBA season. While this has been more eventful than most Steelers offseasons, I can’t say I expected this.

“Steelers trading Kenny Pickett to Eagles.” my ESPN app has been blowing up with news, but I certainly didn’t expect this. After just 2 (underwhelming) seasons in Pittsburgh, Kenny is headed to Philly for a couple of pick swaps. Reportedly, he didn’t want to compete for the starting role with recent acquisition Russell Wilson. At first, I was a little bit sad.

If you know me, you know that I will always try to spin whatever my teams do into something positive. Some (most) of the time, this doesn’t pan out. Not too long ago, I was telling everyone and their mother that Mitch Trubisky was a good offense away from carrying a team to a deep playoff run. After all, he did bring a bad Bears team to the playoffs, even if it was on the back of their stout defense. This is just one example, and you see how that played out.

I did the same thing this year with Kenny. We had a lousy excuse for an Offensive Coordinator for the majority of the 2023 campaign. He who will not be named (Matt Canada,) was disappointing to say the least. OC by committee was a little better, so I was convinced that the upcoming season with Arthur Smith at the helm would be a perfect chance for things to turn around for Pickett.

With the addition of Russ, I told myself (and everyone around me) that yes, he has been terrible the last couple of years. But this guy won a Super Bowl! Yes, it was 10 years ago. You still couldn’t convince me that he’s not better competition than Mason Rudolph. And maybe the craziest bit of my argument was thinking that he could be a productive teacher for Kenny, even if he’s the backup.

Now, we won’t have to worry about that. To be completely honest, I love this move. Something about Kenny just didn’t scream Pittsburgh to me. While he literally went to Pitt, he never showed the grit that guys like Big Ben and Charlie Batch brought during my childhood. To me, this trade is a buy-in. Either we get one good year from Russ, or he’s bad and we get a good pick in next years draft. I wish the best of luck to Kenny Pickett and even more to my Steelers this year.