Whether intentionally or not, Cleveland Browns quarterback Kenny Pickett threw some shade at his former team, the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Pickett touched on his time with the Philadelphia Eagles, who acquired him via trade with the Steelers in 2024. The former first-round pick spent the campaign sitting behind Jalen Hurts and got himself a Super Bowl ring in the process.
On Wednesday, Pickett said he was “extremely grateful” for his stint in Philly and believes his season there showed him “how it’s supposed to be done,” which isn’t a great look for the Steelers.
“I’m extremely grateful for my time in Philly,” Pickett said, according to Scott Petrak of The Chronicle-Telegram. “I think I was shown just how it’s supposed to be done, really, from the top down.
“So, when you get a chance to see what it’s supposed to look like, and how it should look on a day-to-day basis — and not just on Sundays — I think it’ll pay dividends for me in the future.”
Pickett was the No. 20 overall pick in the 2022 NFL draft and spent two seasons with the Steelers, where he started 24 games.
The Pitt product wasn’t blameless in his struggles with the Steelers by any means, but Pittsburgh didn’t do a great job protecting him with a shoddy offensive line.
Pickett’s weapons on offense weren’t great, either, and the offensive system as a whole simply didn’t work.
Recently, Steelers legend Terry Bradshaw came to Pickett’s defense, blaming the Steelers for his failure in Pittsburgh.
“I liked Kenny Pickett,” Bradshaw stated on 103.7 The Buzz’s Morning Mayhem. “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.
“Then they throw a kid in there for two years and you’ve got an offense that doesn’t fit and doesn’t work, and they can’t run because their offensive line’s not even good enough for a run blocking team. Now, they’re saying Kenny Pickett is a failure. He wasn’t a failure, the Steelers were a failure,” Bradshaw concluded.
The most damning part about Pickett’s stint in Pittsburgh was when Mason Rudolph was inserted into the starting lineup near the end of the 2023 season and managed to guide the Steelers into the playoffs with three straight wins, and he did so with the same cast of characters Pickett had.
Fast forward to 2025 and Pickett has his second opportunity to be a starting signal-caller in Cleveland. However, he’s part of a crowded quarterbacks room that also includes veteran Joe Flacco and rookies Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders.
