Kovacevic: Pickett's not all the way there yet, and neither are the Steelers ... but these strides are really real

INDIANAPOLIS -- If I'm reading this scenario right, Kenny Pickett's expected by the Steelers' broader faithful to fully mature into the franchise's foreseeable-future fixture at football's most important position, all within the single snap of a partial season for an NFL rookie quarterback.

If not sooner. Like yesterday. Or last month.

Oh, come on, don't be the one who denies it and risks running up all those bonus Bill-from-Blawnox yinzer points. I'm not exactly new to this particular social sphere. I kinda get how this goes.

What's more, Kenny's expected to achieve this extraordinarily rare air under surrounding circumstance that ... well, let's run through one specific scene within this 24-17 comeback over the Colts on this Monday night at Lucas Oil Stadium:

That's Diontae Johnson dropping a touchdown. Do act surprised.

This was late in the third quarter. The Steelers' special teams and defense had just blown a 13-point lead, and even the semi-revived offense had stalled in squeezing out 17 total yards on the first two drives following halftime. So when the above series began way back at the Pittsburgh 25, then saw a drop by George Pickens and a 1-yard non-gain by Benny Snell, the latter because Matt Canada never saw a second-and-long run he didn't love, it sure felt like either Kenny was going to take all this over, or it'd all just keep imploding.

The quarter ended. And Kenny took over.

"Kenny's one of those guys in the huddle, who, when it's time to listen, he'll make sure you're listening," Kevin Dotson would tell me afterward. "And believe me, on that drive, we were listening."

____________________

Buckle up.

Third-and-9: Kenny goes right back to Pickens for 13 yards and the half's first movement of the sticks. Then it's Gunner Olszewski around right end for 9 more. Then Snell through left tackle for 13, all the way down to the Indianapolis 26.

And then, because Canada can't ever concede that something's working without having to assign his signature to it, the once-weekly, always-silly, hey-let's-try-something-that-Zach-Gentry-can't-do play scheme brought a loss of 4. 

Again, Kenny was undeterred, completing an 8-yarder over the middle to Johnson, then what might have been his most precise strike of the evening for 17 more to Pat Freiermuth:

(I loved the blocking up there, too, especially the part where Chuks Okorafor knocked his dude down not once but twice, and then stole his lunch money.)

Not sure the clip does the throw justice. I loved it. With my press box vantage point having been right above it, and with my having already shaken my head that there'd be no chance it'd connect, it stood out.

Freiermuth loved it more, telling me, "What a ball. Couldn't have been placed any better."

So the ball's at the 2, Canada has to try something else stupid -- look at me, everyone, and my 1-yard flick to the fullback! -- and the next play was the afore-illustrated Johnson drop.

Which is when Kenny all-the-way took over: An injury timeout allowed him to get to the sideline and spend time with Mike Sullivan, his positional coach. Those two and Mike Tomlin got together, and it was Kenny who shared a play, a simple read option that the Steelers practice quite a bit, that he felt would finish the job.

“Yeah, Coach T puts a lot of confidence in me, just asks what I like, what I don't like," Kenny recalled. "I feel like that play, just watching from tape, you know, all week, simple play, but something I felt like other teams we weren't doing ... that if we gave it a shot, I think we would've been successful. We were in four-down territory, so we were going to go for it again on the next play if we didn't get it. I felt confident ... real confident with that play and real happy we got to the end zone.”

Snell took care of that:

(As long as I'm parenthetically pumping up blocks, check out Olszewski stealing more lunch money at the bottom of the screen.)

Nothing silly or stupid. Just the result.

Which would lead one to believe, cynically, that Canada had nothing to do with it.

Asked if his process included running it past the coordinator upstairs, Kenny replied, "Oh, we have great open communication. You know, I'll go up to Coach Sully and Coach Tomlin, and we had a conversation and that was the play I brought up. I felt really confident about it. They felt good about it, too, so we rolled with it.”

That's 'they,' as in Sullivan and Tomlin. Awesome.

At least that's the vibe Mason Cole gave off when gleefully laying out how it all happened.

"Kenny called it," he'd say. "To see that confidence on third-and-2 at the goal line … it’s big. It's good to see. It's exciting to see. It really shows who he is as a leader, and the command he has in the field. It's really cool.”

The coolest was next, actually:

This is the antithesis of Xs and Os. No one called this one.

Kenny rolled to his left, saw nothing to like, rolled all the way back across -- Ben-style, I dare say -- and Pickens matched him in every way.

Think there's chemistry building there?

“Yeah, it takes time, it takes repetitions," Kenny'd reply to that. "Coach Tomlin does a great job putting us in those situations, seven-shot plays all training camp, all spring. You know, even during the season we have that period once a week. So, it's great to have those opportunities to see them play out in game situations. No one blinks when we get down there. We're real confident in all the stuff that we have because we repped it so many times, working that scramble drill, and just being able to extend and George doing a great job of coming back to the football."

I asked Pickens for his view:

"It was kinda like a scramble drill, not really planned at all," he'd confirm. "I had a fade initially. He came to my side, then to the other side. He went left, he went right. I went left, I went right. He ended up finding me. The DB was already turned around. All I had to do was catch it."

And follow Kenny?

"Yeah."

Follow the leader.

____________________  

I won't take this too far. Promise.

Kenny's numbers won't make anyone forget Joe Burrow or Jalen Hurts: He was 20 of 28 for 174 yards, no touchdowns, no picks, three sacks. Nothing eye-popping, even if one fairly weighs that four of his incompletions were flat-out drops, that two of the three sacks afforded him no escape, that this was the third game in a row without a pick, and that he might've had more yardage if he'd been allowed to make more than two deep attempts all evening:

And see, the numbers are so nondescript that I neglected to mention, he also ran six times for 32 yards:

It's possible, I suppose, that Kenny'll become a fantasy fave someday, but I wouldn't bet on it. Partly because he doesn't come with the weaponry, and partly because he's also more prone to running to the sideline to share an idea he feels will click for the team's No. 3 running back.

He's about winning. He was that at Pitt. He's been that, for anyone who knows him, all his life.

For anyone who's been waiting for a breakout of some sort, this just might've been it. Monday night, national stage, the place where he'd performed not so long ago at the Scouting Combine -- all thoughts he'd acknowledge crossed his mind in the afternoon -- all swelled into a setting that he'd have to take over for the team to succeed. And all he'd do from there is whatever was needed for the W.

Tomlin's annoyed by Kenny questions anymore, and I get that. I even appreciate it. He seems to interpret them as pseudo-criticism or questioning whether or not Kenny's his starter for the longer term, and it couldn't be clearer that's the case.

But hey, I'm annoying, so I asked, anyway:

“You guys ask me that every week," he'd reply, looking at me but evidently seeing that I'd self-cloned into a plural entity. "He's getting better every week, and it's in a very natural way, because of experience. He's a competitor. He's smart. Still a lot of meat on the bone, and it's just a process, but like I always say, he's good enough and we're good enough to win while that happens."

I got that, too. It's become Tomlin's latest defense mechanism against any charge of rebuilding.

"So, we're not grading him or us on a curve," he'd continue. "We acknowledge that he's very much in development. You can ask me next week, and I'll tell you he got better in all areas again next week, because with each snap becomes exposure, and the sharp guys, guys that are competitors, they grow from those things.”

I'll ask again next week.

In the interim, I also asked Kenny if he's getting more comfortable.

“Yeah," he'd reply without hesitation. "I think every week you play in a system, you play with guys, you're going to get more and more comfortable. I think football and playing the quarterback position, it takes a lot of time. It takes continuity with guys continuing to improve, and I think we're seeing that on tape. We're seeing that week in, week out."

Then came this, which was ... oh, just listen: "You know, we're pushing to make the big jumps. And everyone wants to make the big jumps. But sometimes you just got to take the positives and continue to grow and, sooner or later, you'll see that big leap you made as a group. It's special when that all comes together, so that's what we're working toward.”

That, Pittsburgh, is your quarterback. Deal with it, as Tomlin might suggest, appropriately.

• The team's 4-7. The opponent's 4-7-1. I'm not laying it on thick, not individually, certainly not collectively.

• If the head coach really hates questions about his rookie quarterback's progress that much, then maybe he can preside over more than four wins through 11 weeks of the schedule, and there'd be more compelling, original material to bring up in late November. Juuuuuuuuuuuust sayin'.

• I've been tough on Najee at times, but he did some hard, decisive running before going down with an abdominal injury at the half. He'll be missed, and don't assume otherwise. Jaylen Warren's shown backup-level promise -- hard to be a No. 1 in the NFL without a pass-receiving component -- and other two, Snell and Anthony McFarland, fared well enough here, but neither is anyone's answer to any question.

• Speaking of being tough on people at times, Najee's 6-yard touchdown was all about the much-maligned left side of the line, notably Dan Moore and Dotson, executing a glorious student-body-right block:

"We're getting there," Dotson would tell me. "It's not perfect. But there are more pieces in place every time. We really felt like we were together out there. All of us."

Moore, at the next stall, essentially echoed, "There's more confidence every week. You can see that, and we can see that. It's a good feeling."

Kenny went out of his way afterward to praise his line, sounding almost defiant.

"That group we have up front, man, we're pretty tight," he'd say. "And it's great to see from early in the season, with what people were saying, to now and how great those guys are playing. I'm incredibly proud to be their quarterback.”

• Chris Wormley's fumble recovery near the goal line was "huge," as Alex Highsmith would say, but his remarks to me about that fumble ... I had to write up a separate Freeze Frame on that. Mandatory reading, as always.

• When there's one whisper, there's smoke. When there's a ton ... it's likely some opponent slamming Canada's predictability again:

'IT'S THE SAME PLAYS!' someone on the Indianapolis side can be heard shouting, ironically, after a 9-yard run by McFarland. But the point stands.

Canada's chance of being coordinator in 2023 is about the same as that of Matt Ryan being comeback player of the year.

• Funny but true: One defensive player I trust told me the only reason the Steelers didn't sack Ryan more than three times was that they're so used to preparing for mobile quarterbacks that they can overcompensate for someone that slow-footed. Tremendous.

• T.J. Watt's not all the way back. Three tackles, one quarterback hit. I can't blame him. That's a heck of an injury. If anything, one can hope he didn't return too soon.

• Terrific to see Arthur Maulet hovering closer to the line, if only because it's the first game I can recall post-Mike Hilton where a defensive back was utilized in the pass rush. Maulet had a sack, as well as a team-high 10 tackles and a quarterback hit.

The blitz isn't all the way back, but it's at least back to cameo reruns.

• When I talk about Kenny being allowed or not allowed to throw deep, this is what I mean:

• If there's anything more ill-advised than Jeff Saturday's clock management, it's his wasting a golden asset in Jonathan Taylor. Blew my mind. I know 20 carries is a decent load, but this individual's built differently.

• If Tomlin had lost to Saturday ... nah, let's not.

• It'd be reckless and irresponsible for me to point out that it seemed Sullivan was busier on the headset than usual, so I'll avoid doing that. 

• The Nation accounted for at least half the crowd here. And, within that, probably about three-quarters of all the decibels.

You people are nuts.

• Thanks for reading my football work. I hate being known as the hockey/baseball guy to far too many, when I've been proudly covering the Steelers -- including every game they've played, home and road -- for one outlet or another since 1997. It's a joy. 

THE ESSENTIALS

• Boxscore
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THE INJURIES

Hurt in the game: Najee Harris (abdominal muscle) was ruled out at halftime. Chris Halicke has the full report.

The inactives: RB Jaylen Warren (hamstring), CB Ahkello Witherspoon (hamstring), WR Miles Boykin (oblique), LB Robert Spillane (back), QB Mason Rudolph, CB Josh Jackson, G Kendrick Green

THE SCHEDULE

It's the Falcons this coming Sunday, 1:02 p.m., at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Chris and I'll be in Atlanta for that one.

THE CONTENT

Visit our team page for everything from our football staff of Halicke, Ramon Foster, Matt Williamson and myself.