With the draft getting closer and plenty of teams needing quarterbacks, the top quarterbacks are making their way up the board.
Regardless of when the first quarterback is taken, Pitt quarterback Kenny Pickett believes he’ll be the first one to go.
“I think so,” Pickett recently told Breneman Shows Up with Adam Breneman. “I think there’s a lot of reasons for it. You look at the game now and how it’s changing. . . . I’m a mobile guy that [played] in a West Coast pro-style system. I started at a program that was 5-7 the first year I was in. We left as ACC champions, 11-2. So I know how to win. I know the process it takes to get there. It’s never an easy thing and I’ll make that transition, I feel like, faster in the NFL now because [of] that experience . . . that I know how to go about my business as a pro, kind of being an older guy. At the end of the day, that’s what . . . coming around to the position, it’s like, ‘Can you win? Do you know how to handle all the things it takes to be a quarterback?’ I definitely do. So I think I am QB1.”
If Pickett is the first quarterback taken, which team will take him? As to the possibility that the Saints acquired another 2022 first-round pick in order to springboard past the Panthers at No. 6, New Orleans could be eyeing Pickett. Indeed, when Pickett was asked about his toughest interview at the Scouting Combine, New Orleans was the team he named.
“Saints was a good one,” Pickett said. “Saints was really good. I mean, they would try and give you a long play call. You got to stand up, call it like you’re at a huddle, and then you got to watch film. Then it’d be like, ‘What was that play call again?’ They try to bounce you all over the place. That was a good one. And it was the same with the Senior Bowl. They do a good job.”
As to the hand-size concerns with Pickett, they’d be minimized if he plays his home games in a dome.
Wherever he goes, he’ll likely end up going higher than many expected when the pre-draft process began. And he could be the first quarterback to go. And he could indeed be headed for the NFC South, whether it’s the Saints, Panthers, or Falcons.