MOBILE, Ala. — Before anyone really knew who Joe Burrow was, at least compared to the Super Bowl quarterback’s current fame, he was paired up at the Manning Passing Academy camp as roommates with a college quarterback with a bit more experience to that point than he’d had.
Burrow’s quarterback roommate was Pitt’s Kenny Pickett, who had started 15 college games to that point for the Panthers. The little-known Burrow had transferred to LSU from Ohio State the year before and started 13 games for the Tigers in a solid but somewhat underwhelming 2018 season.
The next year, everything changed for Burrow. He delivered one of college football’s best seasons ever by a quarterback, led LSU to a national title and would be the first overall pick in the 2020 NFL draft.
Meanwhile, the 6-foot-3, 217-pound Pickett kept racking up the experience as Pitt’s starter. After the 2020 pandemic season, he’d put up three years of solid, respectable tape. But he was nowhere close at the time to Burrow’s level as a prospect.
Most NFL scouts issued him fourth-round grades at best. Pickett had a call to make: enter the NFL or take advantage of the NCAA’s additional year of eligibility.
Pickett and Senior Bowl director Jim Nagy had a chat that December about his options. Nagy had been at the 2019 Manning camp and had spotted Pickett putting in extra work on a side field one day and was intrigued.
“That just stuck with me,” Nagy said.
Nagy extended an invitation — and Pickett had given him a soft “yes” — but was honest about how the league viewed him.
“I shot him straight at the time,” Nagy said Tuesday morning. “Getting grades back from the NFL, he was going to be a Day 3 player.”
After he discussed the matter with former Pitt offensive coordinator Mark Whipple, his family and others, Pickett was convinced coming back for one final season was his best option.
“I just looked at myself and thought of myself as a higher player than that,” Pickett said. “I wanted to come back and really improve my game.”
It was a gamble considering Pickett’s age (he turns 24 this June). But the gamble more than paid off.
Entering 2021, Pickett had thrown for 39 TD passes in 39 career games, with injuries derailing his production. In 2021 alone, however, Pickett threw for 42 touchdowns, along with a career high in yards (4,319) and the lowest interception rate (seven INTs in 439 attempts) of his career.
Pickett finished third in the Heisman Trophy Award voting and now profiles as perhaps the QB1 of the 2022 NFL draft class. It was the kind of one-year jump — a Burrow-esque jump — that happens every few years.
But Pickett isn’t at all a guarantee to go as high as Burrow and will be competing at this year’s Senior Bowl with five other quarterbacks who nearly all stand as legitimate competition to surpass him in the draft.
Still, Nagy made sure to mention that Pickett had some similarities to Burrow, especially as leaders.
“He’s going to crush the interviews,” Nagy said. “He’s got a really cool way about him. Kind of reminds me of Burrow when I got to know Joe through this process. Guys gravitate to (Pickett). He’s a leader. It comes easy to him.”
Now with Burrow and his Cincinnati Bengals set to face the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LVI, Pickett relishes his past experience with Burrow, wants to follow the roadmap to success Burrow laid out and isn’t afraid to ride his coattails of him at the height of the growing Bengals legend.
“That’s a heck of an intro. I am going to have to have (Nagy) intro me like that everywhere I go,” Pickett said with a laugh. “I talked to him toward the end of our season at Pitt. Definitely a great role model to have coming into the NFL.
“We both can move around, extend some plays, not like Lamar Jackson, but I think that’s a huge piece. Plus, the mental aspect — you can tell by the way he plays. And I think that’s the point I got to this last season at Pitt. I want to streamline the process and get to that at the NFL level.”
Kenny Pickett dismisses hand size talk
Pickett has a lot going for him in his quest to be the first quarterback drafted. But there’s one strange pitfall that hangs over his head this week and beyond.
It’s his hand size.
Yes, it’s hand-size season again in the NFL, and it’s a touchy topic for some. Pickett declined to have his hands measured this week, which is part of the normal process.
Pitt QB Kenny Pickett didn’t have his hands measured here in Mobile, but he has a good reason: He’s double jointed, so his thumb naturally points an odd direction, and he’s doing extra exercises to get an accurate measurement at the combine in March. pic.twitter.com/KLMdraG9AC
— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) January 31, 2022
In the spring, NFL scouts measured his hands at 8 1/4 inches, which would put him in the 0th percentile among NFL quarterbacks — as in, there are none currently in the league with hands that small. A handful of recent QB prospects, such as Princeton’s Kevin Davidson (currently a free agent), have had similar measurements.
Here’s what we wrote on the matter at midseason last year:
Let’s get this part out of the way: Pickett’s 8 1/4-inch hands are going to be an issue for some teams. Not all teams, but some. It surely will cause internal debate with a few clubs. If you’ll notice, he wears two gloves when he plays, just like another smaller-handed QB, Teddy Bridgewater.
Then again, 8 1/4 inches are about as small as we can recall. Nine is a common floor for some teams worried about ball security, especially for worse-weather franchises.
Nagy dismissed the concern, indicating that Pickett’s vast experience playing in less-than-ideal weather in Pittsburgh showed that his ability to grip the football isn’t an issue. Pickett also brushed off the mini-controversy, saying that he’s working on “stretching drills” to widen his hand prior to the NFL scouting combine, where he’ll be re-measured.
“I think that’s the No. 1 thing you hear for quarterbacks in the draft process, is their hands size,” Pickett said, tongue firmly in cheek as he said it. “Anyone who has been to Pittsburgh knows it’s not the nicest place to play in October and November. I have experience playing in tough weather.”
One of those tough-weather games was a rain-soaked Thursday night deluge last November against North Carolina and QB Sam Howell, who also is down in Mobile this week. Pickett’s Panthers bested the Tar Heels in overtime of that game, throwing for 346 yards and three TDs to Howell’s 296 yards and three total scores.
But one reason the hand-size issue will persist: NFL footballs are bigger. In fact, they can measure up to 1 1/4 inches larger than the balls used in college football in terms of overall circumference.
Pickett will be throwing NFL-sized balls this week, starting with Tuesday’s opening practice. He’s confident that there will be no issue.
“I was ready for that question,” he said. “Anyone who has that question can (ask) it now.”