Kenny Pickett is on a heater the last few days at Steelers training camp. First, he made a statement on Friday with his best practice to date. Then, on Saturday, he came back with another strong performance that put more confidence in the second-year quarterback.
However, not every pundit has been on board with Pickett and the hype around him. But Daniel Jeremiah, NFL Network analyst, and former NFL scout, is fully on board with what he saw from Pickett after watching him on Sunday. He went as far to say that Pickett could have some Joe Burrow traits.
“Kenny Pickett is thinking fast & looks very confident,” Jeremiah said. “He has some Burrow traits. He’ll take a big leap in year 2.”
That is a big comparison even in the ‘some’ moniker from Jeremiah, but it is not one that Pickett is foreign to coming out of college. Pickett and Burrow have been compared a lot, and not just because they play each other twice a year. The mobility that Pickett brings, the rapid senior season ascent, and lastly, the modest arm stregnth, have given rise to those comparisons. I understand them, but don’t really see those. It is in a similar bucket to the Trevor Lawrence comparison from earlier this year. But there are certainly ‘some’ things that make them similar, as Jeremiah said above.
I’m not sure what the perfect Pickett comparison really is at a top level. There are some traits of Burrow in there. You can see some Alex Smith. Hey, there’s some Teddy Bridgewater. It’s a wide range of comparisons that none fully fit into him as a whole. But one thing is true, and that is his performance at training camp has given some optimism in the last few days. The offense has diced up the defense. He has the weapons to make a move up the quarterback leaderboard and could be a guy that ends up ascending up the quarterback hierarchy this year.