Getty Steelers QB Kenny Pickett celebrates after a touchdown.
Heading into a critical second season, all eyes will be on Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Kenny Pickett in 2023. Ultimately, the Steelers being competitive (at the very least in their division) will depend on whether he can take the expected giant leap from his rookie season.
Pickett’s teammates and coaches have spoken glowingly about his development, which was on display at this spring’s organized team activities (OTAs) and minicamp.
A former Steelers legend, who’s seen Pickett work from the outside, shares a similar sentiment. Hall of Famer Jerome Bettis talked about his penchant for Pittsburgh’s first-rounder on the Herd with Colin Cowherd.
“I like him. Because we saw the last four weeks of the season his development and he started to go out and win football games,” Bettis said. “And that’s a hard thing to do when the NFL for a quarterback, a young quarterback, rookie quarterback, to go out in the last drive of the game to drive your team down to, to a winning touchdown or a winning field goal. And he did it, I think four times at the end of the year.”
Pickett had a rough go of things when he was thrust into action after halftime of Pittsburgh’s Week 4 rumble with the New York Jets. He scored two rushing touchdowns but tossed three picks. Rookies will rookie. Struggles continued through the first half of the season and it wasn’t until Week 6, versus Tom Brady‘s Tampa Bay Buccaneers, that he scored his first passing touchdown.
But things started to turn around for Pickett after the November 6 Week 9 bye. The Steelers went 7-2 to close out the season.
“And you gotta be special to do that,” Bettis said. “That’s not something that just is in the handbook that says, Hey, we do this. We do. You’ve gotta be special and make those plays. And he made them.”
Jerome Bettis, Ben Roethlisberger Together For Two Seasons
There are few running backs as good of a judge of “special” as Jerome Bettis. He came to Pittsburgh from St. Louis in 1996 after playing with a couple of guys named Jim Everett and Chris Miller and spent most of his career with Kordell Stewart. It wasn’t until the season before what would be his last that the Steelers drafted future first-ballot Hall of Famer Ben Roethlisberger in 2004.
By then, Bettis was at the end of his career and visibly worn down. He’d produced six consecutive 1,000-yard seasons and helped the team to four playoff appearances before Roethlisberger’s arrival.
“(I learned) a lot (from Bettis): how to be a leader, how to be a guy who leads by example, and how to talk to players,” Roethlisberger told WPXI in 2015. Just the everyday grind that a guy at his age and that many years in the league was out there practicing almost every single day and that’s why I take pride in being out here,” Roethlisberger said.
After Roethlisberger’s rookie season, which ended with a heartbreaking 41-27 loss to the New England Patriots in the 2004 AFC Championship Game, Bettis was ready to call it a career.
“I was very, very close to retiring,” he told Penn Live in 2015. “In fact, I talked to the team and told the team that I was retiring. So I was pretty much done.”
But Roethlisberger talked him into returning for the 2005 season. “I’m like, ‘Hey, Jerome, come back, we’re good, we’re gonna go win,” he said on the May 8, 2023, episode of Footbahlin with Ben Roethlisberger. He was reminiscing with his former head coach Bill Cowher on their incredible and historic Super Bowl season.
Had Roethlisberger not convinced Bettis to come back, there’s no telling if they would’ve gotten “one for the thumb.” He wasn’t the running back he was once, having relegated starting duty to Willie Parker, but had what Cowher called an important role as a “great closer.” And a closer he was. In his final season, Bettis ran for just 368 touchdowns but punched in 12 total touchdowns, including three in the postseason.
So it’s safe to say Jerome Bettis calling Kenny Pickett “special” (which he also said of Ben Roethlisberger) means he has what it takes to lead the Pittsburgh Steelers for years to come.