Kenny Pickett Reminds Former Steelers QB of Ben Roethlisberger

The Steelers will have a starting second year quarterback for the first time since 2005 with Kenny Pickett entering the picture following Ben Roethlisberger’s retirement. But not only will the team have that for the first time since then and under Mike Tomlin, but Roethlisberger’s seamless transition will set an extremely high bar the Pickett needs to clear.

But former Steelers QB Charlie Batch actually sees a lot of the similarities between both players. There is obvious areas of improvement that both needed to hit. The parallels between the two of them and where they need to go in year two is stronger than one would think according to Batch.

“This is gonna remind me exactly of how Ben Roethlisberger went from year one to year two,” Batch said on KDKA’s All-Access. “He had a chance to study all of his plays from the season before and that’s exactly what Kenny Pickett is going to do. He’s going to see what they did with the offensive line and they expect the running game to get better, so when you have that, now he has to gain the trust with Matt Canada to push the ball down the field.”

That’s an interesting comparison. Obviously as players, the two guys are far different. However, Batch saw Roethlisberger come up as a young quarterback and now gets to see Pickett do it. They both have veteran teams around them that should help the growth process, and of course, they were both first round picks.

But Pickett is in a different era of Steelers football than Roethlisberger. He will have to do some more heavy lifting. Of course, the team is hoping that he can take that leap into the next tier of quarterbacks in the coming seasons, with this season being an important inflection point for the franchise.