As the NFL season marches on, we find ourselves rapidly approaching the end of the season. It’s crunch time for some teams, desperation time for others, and development time for the rest.

The NFL aired two different Monday night games last night. In Miami, the fans were stunned as their team suffered a historical collapse in the final minutes of a game, and in New York, everyone’s favorite Italian led a comeback that send the home crowd into a frenzy.

But away from all that, in a house back in Pittsburgh, I sat depressed watching these two games.

It wasn’t for a lack of good football; that was a fun Packers-Giants game, and that ending in Dolphins-Titans could not be beat. But instead, I was depressed at what those teams were able to do.

And more importantly, what we in Pittsburgh have not seen all year: great quarterback play.

In New York, the Giants lead a last minute comeback against the Green Bay Packers to secure their fifth win of the season. Giants cult hero Tommy DeVito, who is employing a literal mobster as his agent, helped lead the charge in the game against Green Bay.

DeVito went 17/21 for 158 yards and a touchdown through the air. He added 71 rushing yards to win his third straight game as the quarterback for the Giants.

Some of his best work came on New York’s final drive, where he helped lead the team to field goal range for a game-winning kick by former Steeler Randy Bullock.

Before you say it, I know: we’ve seen late game comebacks from Kenny Pickett before.

It was one of his few solid attributes that we routinely saw over the course of his NFL career to this point.

But here’s what we have not seen from Pickett yet: 8 touchdown passes.

That’s how many touchdown passes DeVito has in 6 games, meanwhile Pickett has 6 touchdown passes in twice the amount of DeVito’s games.

That stat is bad enough on its own, especially considering DeVito went undrafted and Pickett was a first round pick, but it gets worse.

While he didn’t have multiple touchdown passes in this game, DeVito already has more multi-touchdown pass games in his NFL than Pickett does.

But coming back to this game in particular, DeVito looked in control at the quarterback position. He threw a mere 4 incomplete passes in the game, and had excellent pocket awareness. DeVito went the entire game without being sacked, successfully avoiding pass rushes and using his legs to scramble.

I sat watching this game and watching DeVito, and wishing that we were getting that kind of play in Pittsburgh right now.

Was he perfect? No, but he made some incredible plays, and had an incredibly high 81% completion percentage in the game.

With Pickett, we often have found ourselves saying that he wasn’t perfect, but they won the game. Before he went down with injury, Pickett earned a 7-5 record this season. He found a way to get wins, even if they were never in pretty fashion.

But unlike DeVito, Pickett somehow does not have multi-touchdown games to lean back on. DeVito had a single touchdown pass last night, but he has already shown he is more than capable of doing that.

It’s not a huge worry when a guy who has 4 starts under his belt in the NFL has 2+ touchdown passes in half of those starts.

However, it is a huge worry when your guy has a single 2-touchdown game in his career that spans 24 NFL starts.

Such is the case in Pittsburgh.

The Tommy DeVito story is incredible and has taken the NFL by storm, but the longer he goes on and succeeds (he’s brought the 5-8 Giants to one game out of a playoff spot in the NFC), the worse things look for the Steelers and for Pickett.

An undrafted quarterback with the Giants has been outperforming what a first round pick has been able to do with the Steelers.

But DeVito is one of many, many stories that make the Steelers’ quarterback situation look worse.

Joe Flacco, straight off the couch and onto the field for the Cleveland Browns, has back to back multi-touchdown passes and over 250+ yards in both starts for the team so far this year.

For reference, the Steelers have not had that kind of stat line since Ben Roethlisberger retired two years ago.

Over in Cincinnati, backup quarterback Jake Browning has shined in place of the injured Joe Burrow.

Browning set an NFL record for the highest completion percentage for the first three starts of a player’s career.

He’s led a team that everyone left for dead right back into the thick of the playoff race, and has averaged 285.3 yards per game through the air. For comparison, Pickett averages a full 100+ yards LESS in his NFL career, with 181.4 yards per game.

Small sample size, sure, but that doesn’t make things look a lot better for Pickett.

With Pickett out for almost the rest of the season, the Steelers’ opportunity to evaluate him after firing offensive coordinator Matt Canada before the end of the season is finally gone.

I get it: Canada handcuffed him the whole time. But the longer we watch the Tommy DeVitos, Jake Brownings, and late-stage Joe Flaccos of the league, the more we have to sit and look at Pickett’s stat line and seriously wonder what the quarterback situation will look like – and should look like – in 2024.

(Featured photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images)