Prior to what became the last year of Terry Bradshaw\u2019s career, the Steelers had a chance to select Pitt product Dan Marino with the 21st overall selection in the draft. They passed.<\/p>\n
In the months after the last game of Ben Roethlisberger\u2019s career, the Steelers had a chance to select Pitt product Kenny Pickett with the 20th overall selection in the draft. They pounced.<\/p>\n
After only two seasons, they punted on Pickett.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, former Steelers G.M. Kevin Colbert defended the decision to draft Pickett during an appearance on 93.7 The Fan in Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe projected Kenny to be a start-and-win NFL quarterback, and quite honestly, he lived up to that<\/a> in his first two seasons with us,\u201d Colbert said, via Jack Markowski of SI.com. \u201cFor us, he was 14-10 and trending in the right direction. So that\u2019s what we thought we had in Kenny.\u201d<\/p>\n Colbert retired before the decision was made to trade Pickett to the Eagles. He spent the 2024 season in Philadelphia (where he won a Super Bowl ring, unlike Marino) and 2025 in Las Vegas (after being traded to the Browns and then to the Raiders). <\/p>\n Now, Pickett sits on the Panthers\u2019 depth chart behind starter Bryce Young. Does that mean Pickett will be a career backup? Colbert still believes Pickett has a promising future.<\/p>\n \u201cKenny\u2019s a great young man,\u201d Colbert said. \u201cHe\u2019s a great competitor. . . . And I still think at a young age, I still think Kenny can continue to build on what he did with us in those first two seasons.\u201d<\/p>\n Pickett, now 28, will need to get a chance to play \u2014 and play well \u2014 as an understudy in order to earn an opportunity to compete to be a starter again. For now, he has been relegated to journeyman.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the Steelers don\u2019t have a long-term answer at quarterback. They went 20 years between Bradshaw and Roethlisberger because they rarely pick high enough to get a potential franchise quarterback. And, as owner Art Rooney II has made it clear, they have no desire<\/a> to chalk up a season to \u201crebuilding\u201d and hope it positions them to secure a great incoming prospect through a top-10 position in the draft. <\/p>\n In the 53 years since winning their first playoff game on December 23, 1972, the Steelers have picked in the top 10 only five times \u2014 and never higher than No. 7. They may need to have one of their uncharacteristic bottom-third seasons before they\u2019ll be in position to get the next quarterback who can join Bradshaw and Roethlisberger as the only true year-to-year franchise quarterbacks the franchise has ever had.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prior to what became the last year of Terry Bradshaw\u2019s career, the Steelers had a chance to select…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":715942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-715941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/715942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}