After ripping the Pittsburgh Steelers for waiting on Aaron Rodgers in what seems like a never-ending saga, franchise legend Terry Bradshaw also went to town on Pittsburgh for its handling of Kenny Pickett.
Bradshaw was a guest on 103.7 The Buzz’s Morning Mayhem show and called the team’s pursuit of Rodgers a “joke” while also telling the future Hall of Fame quarterback to “stay in California” and “chew on bark.”
“That’s a joke. That is to me just a joke,” he said. “What are you going to do? Bring him in for one year? Are you kidding me? That guy [Rodgers] needs to stay in California. Go somewhere and chew on bark. Whisper to the gods out there.”
Bradshaw wasn’t done there, though.
He also went in on the Steelers for how things went with Pickett, the team’s former first-round pick who failed to establish himself as the franchise quarterback before being traded in 2024.
“I liked Kenny Pickett. I liked him at Pitt. I know him. I know what he’s like. And when they got him to Pittsburgh, here’s what they didn’t do: they didn’t protect him,” Bradshaw said. “They didn’t get him an offensive line. They wanted to run the football, but they didn’t have an offensive line.
“They couldn’t protect, and they didn’t have weapons. He had no wide receivers to speak of. And then you throw a kid in there for two years, and you 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. And therefore they say Pickett was a failure. He wasn’t a failure. The Steelers were a failure.”
Bradshaw definitely makes a valid point when it comes to the offensive line, which was not good during Pickett’s two years as the starter, something that no doubt hindered his progress.
However, his weapons weren’t that bad. George Pickens was a 1,000-yard receiver in 2023, Diontae Johnson was a former 1,000-yard receiver in 2021, and Pat Freiermuth is definitely a plus pass-catcher for the tight end position.
Also not helping Pickett’s cause was the fact that Mason Rudolph took over the final three games of 2023 with the same roster Pickett had and managed to get Pittsburgh to the postseason with three straight wins in that span.
Nobody is going to say the Steelers are blameless for what happened to Pickett, but to sit there and not put any blame on his shoulders isn’t telling the whole story.
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