Kenny Pickett has started 25 games in his career, the last coming in Week 17 last season for Philadelphia. Steve Marcus / Getty Images
Kenny Pickett will be the Las Vegas Raiders’ starting quarterback against the Philadelphia Eagles this weekend, coach Pete Carroll announced on Friday. He will be stepping in for Geno Smith, who did not practice this week after injuring his shoulder and hand in last week’s loss to the Denver Broncos.
“Geno won’t make it back,” Carroll said. “He tried. Couldn’t get it done in this amount of time.
“The expectation I’ve held for backup quarterbacks in the past, they’ve got to be on it every day,” Carroll said. “They’ve got to work every day … They need the mentality that the very next play, they may be in there. Kenny’s done that well. We talked about it way back when, he’s done everything we could ask of him. He had an excellent week. He’s in command of what we’re doing, communications are good and all that. Got a little East Coast in him, so that won’t hurt. We’ll support him in every way that we can to have a good game.”
Pickett, a 2022 first-round pick of the Pittsburgh Steelers, has 25 starts in his four-year career. His last came last season in Week 17 for the Eagles in place of Jalen Hurts in Philadelphia’s 41-7 win over the Dallas Cowboys. Pickett completed 10 of his 15 pass attempts for 143 yards and a touchdown. The bulk of Pickett’s starts came in 2022 and 2023 as a Steeler. Pickett started 12 games in each of those two seasons, helping the Steelers to a 7-5 record in his starts in each campaign.
Since the end of the 2023 season, Pickett has been on the move. After the Steelers signed Russell Wilson in the 2024 offseason, Pickett requested a trade from Pittsburgh. He was sent to the Eagles, where he spent the 2024 season as a backup. After the Eagles won the Super Bowl, they traded Pickett to the Cleveland Browns. In Cleveland, Pickett was part of a crowded quarterback room that included Joe Flacco, Shedeur Sanders and Dillon Gabriel. At the end of training camp, Pickett was traded to the Raiders, where he’s backed up Smith this season.
Pickett made cameos in a couple of games for the Raiders prior to last week but he got his first extended run with Vegas when Smith got injured. Pickett completed eight of his 11 pass attempts against a stellar Broncos defense. He threw a 25-yard touchdown to Shedrick Jackson in the fourth quarter.