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I asked Kenny Pickett—after he drove his Steelers, with the season on the line, 76 yards on 10 plays to a game-winning touchdown against the Raiders—whether he thinks he could’ve made that happen in September, when he first became Pittsburgh’s starter.
He wasn’t sure how to answer.
“I can’t answer that, for earlier in the year,” Pickett told me over his cell. “But I think all the snaps, like you said, have definitely helped me grow and mature—seeing things a step faster. So I just want to continue to build off the good, learn from the bad and keep trending in the right direction.”
In a way, that description of his growth could go for the team around him. We probably should’ve known enough to see it coming, too.
For the first time in a long time, probably going all the way back to a time when Bill Cowher’s job security was in question (believe it or not, that happened), the Steelers had the look of a team that’d be playing out the string at midseason. They went into their bye in Week 9 at 2–6, and they were 3–7 on Thanksgiving. Which most rational people could look at and say,
Then the schedule softened a little, the defense stiffened a little (with T.J. Watt back in the fold) and the starting quarterbacks—Mitch Trubisky and Pickett—started playing a more efficient game in leading a young offense.
The result is a team that’s won five of seven, and four of five, to wedge its way right back in the playoff race. And the growth moment for their quarterback Sunday night—in a dramatic 13–10 win over a Raiders team with an identical record coming in (6–8)—is a pretty good indicator of why the Steelers have been as consistent as they’ve been, on a night when the franchise honored one of the men who established that standard half a century ago (it was the 50th anniversary of Franco Harris’s Immaculate Reception).
“Coach told us, ‘This is where we’re gonna grow up as a team and as an offense,’” Pickett says. “And it was our job to go out there and get it done, and we did that. So I think we definitely grew up some, and that’s a huge positive. There’s still a lot of things that we’re gonna continue to improve on to get to where we need to get to.”
When the Steelers got the ball at their own 24 with 2:55 left, Pittsburgh had just six points and Pickett was having a relatively forgettable night—19-of-31 for 169 yards and a pick (the defense took care of that one in the third quarter by intercepting Derek Carr on the next play). And then he gave those braving a chilling night on the city’s North Shore something other than the retirement of Harris’s number to remember the night by.
Pickett had a 64.4 passer rating at that point. He’d more than double that number (138.4) on the final drive, connecting on seven of nine throws for 75 yards and a touchdown. Really, the only point of tension along the way came on the only third down of the possession, a third-and-5 on the Raiders’ 19 in which Pat Freiermuth picked up four yards. Pickett got that last yard on a sneak on fourth down and, on his next snap, showed the aforementioned growth with his decisiveness.
With 50 seconds showing, Pickett quickly diagnosed the coverage and cut the split-safety deep coverage in half with a rope to fellow rookie George Pickens for the game-winning, 14-yard touchdown to make it 13–10 with 46 seconds left.
“They showed a two-high zone,” Pickett says. “They were kinda shading over the top of Pat [Freiermuth]’s backside, and they were doubling ’Tae [Diontae Johnson] from, I’d probably say, halfway through the second quarter on, because he was catching a lot of footballs early. So I just wanted to keep my eyes left, hold that safety to the boundary and let George do the work on the route.
“It was perfect execution, just like we practiced so many times, so it’s great to practice something that many times and see it come through in the game.”
And as much as anything, it’s a sign of where this operation—sturdy as they come—might be going next. Of course, that it happened on a night that was such an important one for the franchise, in honoring Harris on the week of his death, is more than a bonus.
“Absolutely,” says Pickett, who came to the Steelers with the perspective of a guy who just spent five years playing college football at Pitt, which shares a practice facility with the local NFL team. “Obviously, the passing, we wanted to dedicate the game to him and get the win. So that was kinda like the main focus throughout the week, just find a way to win, get it done for Franco and his family. A special night for the city as well.”
But, yeah, it was also hard not to see some parallels, too, in that it was night of the 50th anniversary of the Immaculate Reception—which had been the unofficial coming-out party of the team in the 1970s—that this young group of Steelers seemed to take this sort of step.
Pickett, of course, is just 24. The three guys he threw to on that drive happen to be in their 20s—Freiermuth (24), Najee Harris (24) and Pickens (21). And the guy commanding attention to open things up for them, Johnson, is just 26. So you don’t have to squint really hard to see where a night like this might be a harbinger of bigger things to come.
“I mean, that’s the plan,” Pickett says. “It all sounds great, but we gotta go do it. And I think that we have the right guys and the right mindset to accomplish those things, so I’m excited for the future with these guys. But there’s still a lot of work left to do.”
The first step, though, is showing you’re capable of doing the job. On Saturday night, when it mattered most, Pickett looked like he was capable.
