Steelers coach Mike Tomlin feels 'comfortable' with Kenny Pickett starting against Titans

Steelers coach Mike Tomlin hasn’t been vague when talking about Kenny Pickett’s injuries this season. He’s embraced the honest approach, as opposed to keeping some stuff secrets.

So Pickett likely will start tonight’s Steelers game against the Tennessee Titans. It’s Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime. That’s the good kind of attention, so you want your best in the game, hoping that a certain rib injury doesn’t preclude that.

“Obviously he got clearance from the medical experts rather quickly in terms of him potentially being available,” Tomlin said in an interview posted Thursday morning with Steelers.com. “And so it was about whether he could do the things they said he needed to do, first to protect himself and play, and then be effective enough in doing so.

“We felt comfortable with what we saw Wednesday at practice,” Tomlin said. “We had a Friday-like practice on Wednesday where we hit all of our situational football – third down, red zone, things of that nature, weighty down moments. He had a really good day, and so we feel comfortable with his availability and his ability to do his thing.”

This is second time this season Steelers dealt with Pickett injury

This is the second time this season that Kenny Pickett faced the reality that he may not be able to start a game. He hurt his knee as he was sacked by a Texans defender last month. But the knee injury didn’t turn out to be severe and Pickett started the very next Sunday, leading the Steelers to a victory over the Ravens.

However, in this week’s situation, the Steelers don’t have much turnaround time. Pickett injured his ribs in the first half of the loss to the Jaguars. Pain tolerance plays a factor. By Tuesday Pickett told reporters he would play.

“It’s frustrating, it’s part of the game, though,” Pickett told reporters. “I’ve been doing it for a little bit. It is what it is. You’ve just got to be available, and get ready to go on Thursday night. … “I’m playing, for sure.”

The official Steelers injury report said that Pickett was limited in practice Monday and Tuesday. He was a full participant, Wednesday.

Tomlin said there’s no need to be vague about injury updates

A reporter asked Tomlin why he was so forthcoming in regards to Pickett’s injury. He took the same tact when the Steelers were prepping for the Ravens after Pickett’s injury against the Texans.

“I don’t waste a lot of energy on that in general, because I know globally, most of the prudent football people are going to assume that the starter is going to be available and then work from there,” Tomlin said. “And so if we were talking about non-starter-like decisions, if I was making a choice between backups with differing styles of play, like when we had Mason Rudolph and Josh Dobbs here, that might serve as an edge for us in terms of being vague in those circumstances.

“But I think most teams’ default mode is starters will be playing,” Tomlin said. “And so when the starter is playing I know that globally within our industry, it doesn’t benefit you in any way to waste a lot of energy in that regard.”