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The original was posted on /r/nfl by /u/OnlyMamaKnows on 2023-10-12 18:22:35.
The unstable play of the offensive line has made Pickett revert to the poor pocket awareness he showed in his college days at Pitt.
It was one of the shortcomings noted by The Athletic’s draft expert, Dane Brugler, leading up to the 2022 draft, so much so that Steelers quarterbacks coach Mike Sullivan worked extensively with Pickett on it during the summer. Sullivan wanted to see Pickett move up in the pocket and slide to the right or left rather than just getting out of the way, whether the pressure he felt was real or not.
It worked in the preseason. Not so much during the regular season, which has many pointing back to the original evaluation of the No. 20 pick and the first quarterback taken in the ’22 draft.
Through five games, Pickett has been pressured on 29.4 percent of his dropbacks, the fourth-highest rate in the league, per Pro Football Reference’s charting. He has been hurried 20 times, hit 18 times and sacked 14 times. Some of them have been his fault. Others were the offensive line’s fault. All of them were the Steelers’ fault.
Pickett’s penchant for exiting the pocket even with ghost pressure — pressure that isn’t really there — isn’t new.
“He got destroyed behind a bad offensive line as an underclassman, and you could tell it was in the back of his mind on his (2021) tape by sometimes escaping clean pockets or feeling a rush that wasn’t there,” Brugler said. “His offensive line as a (sixth-year) senior was a huge upgrade, and he got better throughout the season. But pocket presence is such a ‘feel’ skill, and it was more work-in-progress for him than a seasoned area of his game as a prospect.”