A month after postponing the measurement of his hand at the Senior Bowl on Mobile, the moment of truth came on Thursday for Pittsburgh quarterback Kenny Pickett.
Not surprisingly, Pickett’s hand size is 8.5 inches, one of the smallest recorded quarterback hand size measurements in NFL history, according to NFL analyst Warren Sharp.
in terms of Pickett’s 8.5-inch hands
of the 663 QB with measured arm sizes since 1987, only 9 had arms smaller than 8.5 “
no QB in NFL with 8.5 “hands
there has been no QB to enter the NFL in at least 5 years with 8.5 “hands
the last successful QB with 8.5 “hands was Mike Vic
– Warren Sharp (@SharpFootball) March 3, 2022
These numbers are pretty amazing to watch. Only nine of the 663 quarterbacks ever measured since 1987 had hands smaller than 8.5 inches. There are currently no quarterbacks in the NFL with 8.5-inch hands, including none entering the league in the last five years. The last QB with 8.5-inch hands, considered successful, was a transcendent star in Atlanta’s Mike Vick.
So there is certainly hope for Pickett, after all, unless you read Twitter and see how people are already writing it off due to a measurement that does not meet the threshold as a whole.
It will certainly not allow this to bother him to move on.
“No, that’s what it is. I think the media is doing more than I would say NFL teams are doing,” Pickett was quoted as saying by the Associated Press in Indianapolis on Thursday. “There wasn’t much talk about it in all the official and informal interviews I’ve had this week.
Pickett raised his eyebrows at the Senior Bowl when he refused to measure his hands. It’s not uncommon for potential customers to do this, and this actually works in Pickett’s favor, as he has reportedly gained half an inch in the size of his arm due to exercise.
“The reason I didn’t measure up to the Senior Bowl was to have those extra few weeks,” Pickett said. “Just something common sense, to have more time to work with the exercises. “What it measures, it measures.”
This is the approach that Pickett must take, because the tape and the field experience tell a bigger story, not some measurement that is included in a spreadsheet. Understandably, this little measurement of arm size will remove Pickett from the boards of some teams, and he understands that. He just lets his game speak for him, not the measurement by hand.
“The big deal is your tape,” Pickett said. “There are many games throughout your career where people can watch. This is your resume. Your tape is your resume. All these other things are the boxes you need to check before the draft. “
The good news, at least on the surface, for a man like Pickett is that some of the more successful teams in NFL history – including the Pittsburgh Steelers – will not suddenly change their position on a man because his hands are big or small.
Steelers general manager Kevin Colbert spoke at length about the size of his hand and the important role he played – or not – in the scouting process from Steelers’ point of view during his meeting with local media last week. Colbert, who spent some time with the Detroit Lions as a professional scout director before becoming Steelers’ director of football operations, used former Pro Bowl successor Herman Moore as an example of why arm size isn’t the same and can be misleading.
“We make every known measurement. “Sometimes these things are misleading,” Colbert said during a media session, according to an official transcript provided by the team. I always tell the story when people talk about arm size, Herman Moore was a great receiver we had with the Detroit Lions. Herman Moore was 6 feet 4, but his hands were 8 1/2. Herman Moore had great hands. Well, Herman couldn’t spread his fingers, but his fingers were very long.
“So, sometimes we get carried away. I would look at more statistics from the point of view, “Colbert added. “How does a player lose the ball if he mixes it up? How does it deliver? Does it get to where it needs to go? We take as much information as we can, but overall we will just appreciate the player as a whole. ”
It is worth noting that according to the Dane Brugler from The Athletic, Pickett has felt football 38 times in Pittsburgh over a period of five years.
Joe Barrow was 9 “- for many teams this is the threshold.
IMO, Pickett’s smaller hands don’t really see him as a passer (most teams feel the same). Ball security is another story (38 career problems in Pete). https://t.co/gRB3qcGdTS
– Dane Brugler (@dpbrugler) March 3, 2022
But, as Brugler points out, many teams feel that the small size of Pickett’s hand is not seen with him as a passer, almost in the same way that it was not with Joe Burrow and his 9-inch hands, which led to an iconic tweet from QB in Cincinnati.
Joe Burrow’s response after his hands were measured at 9 inches at the NFL Combine on Monday 😂 pic.twitter.com/Hitw9w8peT
– ESPN (@espn) February 24, 2020
Everyone knows how this turned out for the upcoming No. 1 pick in 2020. Pickett is not at the level of Barrow as a quarterback, but the size of his hand will not be a deterrent to the fact that he is a high pick in the first round. The tape does not lie.