Kenny Pickett looked like a new man on Sunday in Cincinnati.

In his first game after the firing of offensive coordinator Matt Canada, Pickett threw for 278 yards, the second highest total of his NFL career to date, and threw seemingly without fear all over the field.

The Steelers used the middle of the field like a real NFL offense, and deployed their tight ends, in particular Pat Freiermuth, in the passing game.

I will admit, after the loss in Cleveland against the Browns, I was willing to call it on Pickett. He threw for a measly 106 yards, and that throw 20 yards clear of anyone was an absolute doozy.

I wrote in my postgame column, which is basically me giving knee-jerk thoughts and reactions immediately after Steelers games, that I didn’t think Kenny Pickett was an NFL quarterback.

I was fully open to looking for other options at the quarterback position, in part because I did not believe the Steelers would make any move regarding Canada.

And I, along with every other Steelers fan, would have had every right to believe that Canada was going nowhere. After all, the team had not fired any coach mid-season since before Pearl Harbor. It’s not “The Steeler Way.”

Yet, last Tuesday, the Steelers gave their fans an early Christmas gift, giving Canada his papers after the loss to the Browns.

Some fans who were out on Pickett suddenly gave him a new lease on football life, because now we were going to get to see Kenny unburdened

And in the immediate results, it worked pretty well. Pickett went 24/33 for 278 yards. Freiermuth was Pickett’s favorite target, racking up a career high 120 receiving yards on 9 catches.

The running game aided Pickett as well, with Najee Harris putting together a bounce back effort with 99 rushing yards (so close!) on 15 attempts.

But Pickett made big plays when he needed to. He set the tone of the game on the very first snap, firing a middle of the field bullet to Muth for a big gain.

He also leaned on his patented sideline shots as well, throwing one to both George Pickens and Diontae Johnson, who each made big-time catches on beautiful passes.

So is Kenny Pickett the real deal? Maybe.

It’s simply too early to tell.

To get a competent evaluation of Pickett, we essentially have to start over. Now that we know what he is capable of post-Canada, we need to start with a clean slate.

It’s not ideal to have to do that for a quarterback who has already made 20+ NFL starts and is a first round pick, but that’s something out of Pickett’s control at this point. He was handcuffed by the Canada offense, and the decision to keep Canada around this year by the organization looks more and more inexcusable every day after his firing.

Pickett’s 278 yards was great, and it helped the team engineer a 400+ yard day on offense, the first time in literal years we have seen that. But we still need more.

Pickett, officially, had no touchdown passes in the game. I know, I know, the Johnson pass, in hindsight, is a touchdown, but it doesn’t count on the stat sheet. And even if it did, we would still need more endzone throws from Kenny. Pickett has a mere 6 touchdown passes all season long. That number has to be higher.

Listen, I hope dearly that what I said after the Browns loss was wrong. I want Kenny to prove me wrong. I love him as a person and am rooting for him to succeed.

But we need to be cautious after one good game. Because that’s what it was.

We can’t get complacent with what we saw on Sunday. The team still only accured 16 points on the board. Regardless of circumstances that maybe hindered more points, that’s the long and short of it.

As Mike Tomlin likes to say, the Steelers live in a results oriented business. They need to score more points, because sooner or later, 16 points (which is around what they were averaging with Canada) won’t beat the top teams in the league, no matter how good your defense is.

It’s a good start, and should give the Steelers momentum moving forward. But it’s acceptable, and frankly should be commonplace, to still want more from Pickett.

That’s not meant to take away from what he showed he could do without the Canada curse, but it’s a hope that he will only continue to show that Canada was the real problem, not Kenny.

I do think Pickett should be playing for 2024 security down the stretch in this season. If he continues to do and improves upon what he did against the Bengals, I think you have your guy.

If he reverts back to what we have seen for a majority of his starts, well that’s a conversation I’m sure some fans will be dying to resume.

We should all be cautiously optimistic about Pickett right now. He was good, now let’s see him be great.

(Featured photo by Dylan Buell/Getty Images)