What It Means:

Pickett is not expected to start "anytime soon," writes Mark Kaboly of The Athletic, while Mitchell Trubisky remains the heavy favorite to be the Steelers' Week 1 starter. The Steelers have their bye in Week 9, so depending on how Trubisky performs over the first half of the season, Pickett could potentially take over after the bye week.

Pickett led the 2022 draft class in Passing Efficiency Rating, adjusted yards per attempt (9.7), and QBR (81.2), with the latter ranking ninth in the nation. He also ranked in the 95th percentile with 51 games of 10-plus pass attempts. On the other side of the equation, only 15.1% of Pickett's pass attempts came against defenses ranked inside the top 50 by Bill Connelly's SP+, which was the eighth-lowest mark among all quarterbacks drafted since 2010. No other quarterback in the class had less than 28% of their attempts against top-50 defenses.