Kenny Pickett Called Steelers Game-Winning Play

The Pittsburgh Steelers made the biggest call of his young career - and it worked.
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INDIANAPOLIS -- The Pittsburgh Steelers needed all four quarters and a game-winning drive to seal their Week 12 win over the Indianapolis Colts. And on that final offensive play, which resulted in the go-ahead touchdown, their rookie quarterback made the call. 

Kenny Pickett finished the night 20 of 28 for 174 yards, but his biggest contribution came on a run. With a little over nine minutes left in the game, trailing 17-16, the Steelers took a timeout. 

Pickett and the offense met on the sideline where the rookie quarterback made himself known. Without a big speech on why or going to any coaches and saying "we need to run this," Pickett came up with the best play on third and goal - and it worked. 

"He called the one we scored on. Kenny called that," center Mason Cole said. "He said let's run this. I was all for it because it was a running play. To see the confidence on third-and-two on the goal line, it's big. It's good to see. It's exciting to see. It shows who he is is a leader, and the command he has on the field is really cool."

Benny Snell took it two yards off the left side into the endzone for his first score of the season, handing the Steelers a 22-17 lead. On the next play, Pickett found George Pickens in the corner of the endzone for the two-point conversion. 

"Coach T (Mike Tomlin) puts a lot of confidence in myself, just asks me what I like, what I don't like. I feel like that play, just watching from tape, you know, all week, simple play, but something I felt like other teams we weren't doing that I think if we gave it a shot, I think we would've been successful," Pickett said. "We were in four-down territory. Yeah, so we were going to go for it again on the next play if we didn't get it. I felt confident real confident with that play and real happy we got to the end zone.”

Over the last three games, Pickett has not turned the ball over and has led the Steelers to two wins. It's a development everyone is seeing, and one that's giving Pittsburgh the opportunity to win each week. 

"There is a lot of positives to take from it," Pickett said on the game. "It's really hard to win in this league. Right now we're a four-win team right now. We have to own that and chip away and get back to winning, and this definitely was a start. So, there are things we got to build from off this game and take a lot of positive from it. Obviously, there are things we will check the tape and we got a quick turnaround to get back on Sunday and go to Atlanta. There are things we got to clean up and get right in order to take care of business on Sunday."

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Noah Strackbein
NOAH STRACKBEIN

Noah is the Publisher for All Steelers, Inside the Panthers (InsideThePanthers.com) and Inside the Penguins (InsidethePenguins.com), and is the host of All Steelers Talk (YouTube.com/AllSteelersTalk). A Scranton native, Noah made his way to the Pittsburgh sports scene in 2017. Now, he's pretty much full-yinzer.