Kenny Pickett Hand Width Measured at 8 1/2 Inches
INDIANAPOLIS — After a month of speculation, the hand width of Pitt quarterback Kenny Pickett was established on Thursday at the 2022 NFL Combine.
Pickett’s hand measured 8 1/2 inches wide, which puts him on the lower end of the scale for NFL-bound quarterbacks, but not a historic outlier.
In this class, Pickett’s hands are the same size as Kansas State’s Skyler Thompson and Brown’s EJ Perry are just a quarter inch larger. Cincinnati’s Desmond Ridder boasted a 10-inch hand spread.
Just one quarterback at the 2020 NFL Combine had smaller hands than Pickett: Princeton’s Kevin Davidson, who went to the Cleveland Browns as an undrafted free agent.
perspective on Pickett's 8.5 inch hands
of 663 QBs w measured hand sizes since 1987, only 9 had smaller than 8.5" hands
there is no QB in the NFL with 8.5" hands
there has been no QB to enter the NFL in at least 5 yrs w 8.5" hands
last successful QB w 8.5" hands was Mike Vick
— Warren Sharp (@SharpFootball) March 3, 2022
Pickett did not have his hands measured at the 2022 Senior Bowl, sparking the controversy. He said he wanted to take extra time to do exercises to improve the mobility in his hand joints before getting measured in Indianapolis.
“It’s just exercises I’m doing,” Pickett explained. “The reason why I didn’t measure at the Senior Bowl was to have those extra couple weeks. Just a common sense thing, having more time to work the exercises.”
The importance of the hand size of a quarterback has been debated, with Steelers general manager Kevin Colbert saying he prefers to evaluate the players’ whole body of work rather than focusing on one attribute.
“I think the media runs with it more than I’d say NFL teams do,” Pickett said Wednesday. “There wasn’t much talk about that in all the formal interviews and informal interviews I’ve had so far this week. It is what it is.”
Super Bowl quarterback Joe Burrow was caught up in the same storyline as Pickett when is hands measure nine inches wide before being drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals. It certainly hasn’t slowed him down in the NFL.
Pickett’s other measurements came in at 6-foot-3, 217 pounds and 30 5/8-inch arms.
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