Kenny Pickett earns bills’ respect for standing up to Shaq Lawson: ‘That takes a lot of guts from a QB’ – Steelers Depot

The Pittsburgh Steelers may have lost the battle on Sunday, but… they didn’t win the war either. But their new quarterback showed at least some potential, and some spirit. Kenny Pickett already showed a willingness to take hits within the game context, but also showed the tenacity to stand up for himself against a very questionable hit.

Pickett received a blow to the knee from Buffalo Bills defender Shaq Lawson with about a minute to play on a 4th-and-17th throw in a 35-point game. He pushed Lawson in response, who drew a penalty for himself – none for the defender. But his response has been widely praised, even by Bills players.

“I liked it,” Buffalo wide receiver Stefon Diggs said on The Voncast, a podcast hosted by his teammate, Von Miller. Shit, though, he’s not my quarterback, so he’s still the ops, but when I saw him do it, I was like, ‘That takes a lot of guts from a quarterback to push a d-lineman, especially like that’ n'”.

“Shaq is not a sucker,” he continued. “It showed that he’s tough. And his teammates came and supported him, so you have to, one, give him some respect, and two, like, okay, he’s got something to do with them. He’s not your ordinary little cutie “Imma just take it on the chin”.

You would hope that for the most part, NFL players are not trying to physically injure each other. I don’t know what kind of hit Lawson wanted, but the one he ended up putting on Pickett was definitely a dangerous one, as it ended up around the knee.

Pickett said the same thing after the game when asked why he was responding to Lawson the way he did, telling reporters that, from his perspective at the time, he felt like the defender went for his knee after the pitch.

And it wasn’t the first hit he’d taken during the day. The first to be questionable even belonged to a former college teammate, Damar Hamlin, who was shot by guard James Daniels – who was also widely praised in the locker room. But even Bills defenders appreciated their rival quarterback’s fire.

“I don’t think it has that much to do with the hit that Shaq had on him,” Miller said. “I think it was so much like, ‘Our score and the situation we’re in, it’s not acceptable. This won’t be us. This is my first start, but I’m going to show you I don’t accept this shit .This is not good with me’”.

In other words, they wish their own quarterback would respond in kind if they were put in the same situation. And things get worse when it seems clear that the officials aren’t protecting him in the same way that other quarterbacks do, as Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin said in his post-game press conference.