Tim Benz: Kenny Pickett identifies significant rookie season challenge — and how he's handling it

Troy Aikman returned to the same conversation with Pittsburgh Steelers rookie quarterback Kenny Pickett multiple times throughout the broadcast.

During the “Monday Night Football” game between the Steelers and Indianapolis Colts, the ESPN analyst frequently referenced how Pickett had a different take than what the usual rookie QB has to say about making the leap from the college game to the NFL.

According to Aikman, Pickett told the crew during their pre-game interview that adjusting to the speed of the pro game wasn’t his biggest challenge — as so many other rookie QBs have frequently stated.

Rather, Aikman relayed that Pickett claimed his biggest challenge was “the volume of defense he has seen.”

Like Aikman, I was intrigued by that response. So what did Pickett exactly mean by that? Wednesday afternoon, I asked him to elaborate.

“Everyone just talks about the speed of players and the speed of the game is faster. That’s true. Definitely, everyone’s faster,” Pickett replied. “As a rookie coming in, one, you’re learning a new system. And, two, you’re going against a lot more defenses than you’re used to in college. So, when people think — from a quarterback standpoint at least — just talking about when the game moves faster, there’s a lot more going on mentally. So, that’s why I think it feels a lot faster than it really, truly is just (from) the physical standpoint of it.”

So, in other words, faster players moving at a faster pace hasn’t been the biggest problem for Pickett in his first NFL season. It’s how quickly those fast players are making him dissect the multiplicity of their looks.

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“I think there’s just a higher volume in the game plan of defenses in the NFL based off of college. That’s just the main difference that I’ve seen,” Pickett continued. “In terms of the speed of the game, it’s not so much — for me — the physical piece of it with guys and their speed. It’s the mental processing of, first off, what’s our game plan? How do we want to attack them? And then all the different things that they do that just speed up your mind.”

In terms of getting that first part done — learning how to attack the other team — Pickett said that part is coming along.

“Now that I’m getting more comfortable in our system, I feel like the game is slowing down a little bit for me, and I’m able to play more comfortably,” Pickett said.

In that regard, Pickett’s teammates are already seeing that growth.

“Every game he plays, he is getting more comfortable,” tight end Pat Freiermuth said. “Now he is understanding the concept of the plays and understands where to go. What the defense does. Not just locking on a single person. He’s doing a great job trusting his reads.”

To the second point Pickett mentioned — figuring out the opposing defenses — the 24-year-old said in-game learning has proven to be the biggest adjustment since his graduation from the college ranks.

“In college, you get in the flow of the game. You’re going to see the same look multiple times, and when you make sideline adjustments on it, you can almost guarantee that you’re going to get that same look that you saw earlier in the game. I think at this level, you’re going to see multiple looks of the same formation structurally,” Pickett explained.

Head coach Mike Tomlin said that’s something Pickett’s young receivers are dealing with as well.

“The myriad of coverages and the bastard coverages that you see and the complexities of the things that you see requires adjustments and thinking on your feet and running adjustments. It’s a challenge for all young people on offense, probably receivers just as much as quarterbacks,” Tomlin said.

In Freiermuth’s opinion, though, the learning curve is much steeper for Pickett.

“Kenny has to see all sides of the defense,” Freiermuth said. “It’s huge for a quarterback. Ben probably said the same thing when he was younger too. That speed of the defense and the amount of things the defenses can run, it’s a lot.”

On the field, how has all that learning translated for Pickett? Apparently, it has made a difference in avoiding mistakes. The Pitt grad hasn’t thrown an interception in any of the last three games.

Where does the residue of all that education need to manifest next? Pretty much everywhere else. Specifically, big plays and scoring points.

Pickett’s 6.0 yards per pass attempt is only 34th in the league. He has just one touchdown pass in his last four games and has yet to have a passing play over 36 yards. His average 84.3 passer rating in three games since the bye is an improvement from where it had been but that would still only rank 27th in the NFL based on year-long stats.

But if he has at least learned that mental processing is the issue and that the league isn’t too fast for him, that’s a start.