One of the stranger talking points with respect to the physical attributes of players in the 2022 NFL Draft was the size of former Pitt quarterback's Kenny Pickett's hands.
Pickett's paws were measured at 8.5 inches, which ranks smallest among active NFL quarterbacks.
Obviously the Steelers weren't put off by this, since they selected Pickett 20th overall.
On Wednesday, team brass addressed Pickett's hands, and whether they were concerned about it.
“Honestly, I never paid attention to that,” Steelers GM Kevin Colbert reportedly said on the PFT PM podcast. “We look at the results. We watch Kenny play in our environment. ... Can he throw the football? Absolutely. Did he have an excessive fumble rate? No, he didn’t. We just judge it on how he played.”
Meanwhile, in a separate appearance on the Rich Eisen Show, head coach Mike Tomlin said he might have been persuaded by Pickett's undersized hands had he not seen him play well in inclement conditions.
“I potentially was capable of buying into that if I didn’t watch him play college football in Pittsburgh and deal with the elements that come with playing in this environment,” Tomlin said. “So you can buy into the hand size thing or you can just look at how he performed in a variety of conditions, and we have those conditions in Pittsburgh. So there was very little speculation from our perspective about how he might handle the ball in inclement weather, wet days, etc. They played North Carolina on a Thursday night, I went to the game, it was raining pretty good that night and he had no issues.”
While Pickett did have some fumble issues earlier in his college career, he put the ball on the ground only three times in his breakout senior year. He also had only seven interceptions last season, suggesting he had no trouble controlling his throws.
Pickett, who finished third in Heisman voting as a senior, is known to wear gloves on both of his hands.
He was one of only four quarterbacks drafted within the first three rounds since 2000 to have hands measuring 8.5 inches or smaller, The Athletic reported -- the others being Michael Vick, Charlie Frye, and Kevin O'Connell.
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