The Cleveland Browns took a big swing in the offseason.
They traded for Kenny Pickett, and while most people assumed he would be a backup or a third-stringer, the front office and coaching staff gushed about him and talked about him as a potential starter.
Pickett entered the league with plenty of doubts, and he didn’t look good in his brief tenure as a starter.
He played limited snaps last season as Jalen Hurts’ backup, and he wasn’t much better.
Nevertheless, Pittsburgh Steelers legend Terry Bradshaw believes the narrative about him isn’t fair.
“I liked Kenny Pickett,” Bradshaw said. “When they got him to Pittsburgh, they didn’t protect him, they didn’t get him an offensive line. They wanted to run the football, but they didn’t have an offensive line that could protect and they didn’t have weapons. He had no wide receivers to speak of. […] Now, they’re saying Kenny Pickett is a failure. He wasn’t a failure, the Steelers were a failure.”
That makes perfect sense, and it’s hard to think of any quarterback who would’ve thrived behind the Steelers’ offensive line, much less in Matt Canada’s offense.
The team never seemed to be fully committed to Pickett, and the sample size wasn’t big enough to just shut the door on him.
That being said, he didn’t always prove to have what it takes to be a successful NFL player, not in college or the league.
He doesn’t boast any elite traits, and you don’t see the intangibles, either.
Even so, Pickett is still young, and some players need to find the right system and scenery to be at their best.
Not many people seem to be high on him or believe he can be the team’s long-term answer at the position, but we’ve seen some late bloomers prove the doubters wrong many times in the past.
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