The Pittsburgh Steelers drafted who they believe will be their quarterback of the future Thursday night in Kenny Pickett.
Had they passed on him or he wasn’t available, things might have really gotten crazy.
With Ben Roethlisberger now retired, the Steelers signed Mitch Trubisky over the offseason and used a first-round pick on Kenny Pickett. Trubisky will keep the seat warm for Pickett until he’s ready to take over as a starter in the NFL.
But what if the Carolina Panthers or New Orleans Saints drafted Pickett, or if someone the Steelers liked more than the quarterback fell to them at 20th? Audacy NFL Insider Mike Lombardi shared on his “GM Shuffle” podcast the chatter he had heard that, in retrospect, seems unfathomable.
“I got trapped into the kid Carson Strong, from (Nevada)," Lombardi said (8:15 in the player above). "I was told by somebody reliably that I trust that if the Steelers if they didn’t go quarterback in the first round they would pick him in the second. And usually, this person that told me that is really reliable when it comes to Pittsburgh. They didn’t even pick him in the seventh, they picked another quarterback. So my point is, just trust your own evaluation because there’s too much misinformation out there."
Adding to the overall wildness of the rumor, Strong ultimately went undrafted and signed with the Philadelphia Eagles. The Steelers ended up taking Chris Oladokun in the seventh round out of North Dakota State so they could go into camp with four quarterbacks.
As the last line from Lombardi suggests, all the misinformation that comes out in the draft shouldn’t signal that Strong was destined for Pittsburgh had they not ended up with Pickett. In fact, that insight from Lombardi only further underscores how crazy the chatter can get this time of year.
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