If you’d have asked a 10-year-old Kenny Pickett which NFL team he’d want to play quarterback for, he’d have told you the Philadelphia Eagles.
If you’d have asked a 10-year-old Nick Sirianni which NFL team he’d want to coach, he’d have said the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Now, their winding football careers have led Pickett to be the Steelers’ starting quarterback and Siranni to be the Eagles’ head coach. Pickett is in his first year and Sirianni in his second, but both are living dreams that will intersect Sunday afternoon at Lincoln Financial Field.
“It’s full-circle,” Pickett said Wednesday after practice. “I’ve got memories going back to when I was 4 or 5 years old.”
“A really cool memory that I have with my dad and my brothers, who were all Steelers fans, as well, is watching that 2005 Super Bowl together, just as a family,” Sirianni said about an hour earlier. “I wasn’t in the NFL yet — I was coaching at Mount Union [in Ohio] at the time — but I came home in a snowstorm to watch that game.”
Pickett grew up in Ocean Township, N.J., an hour outside of Bristol, Pa., where his father Ken — a lifelong Philadelphia fan — worked on the NJ-PA border. The younger Pickett adopted the same fandoms as his dad. Earlier this week, Kenny’s mom, Kasey, texted him that she was looking for an old photo of him with former Eagles star quarterback Donovan McNabb.
The Sirianni family can relate to the Picketts. Nick, hired last year by the Eagles after three seasons as the Colts’ offensive coordinator, grew up around football. His mom, Amy, is from Natrona Heights and his dad, Fran, from Kane, Pa., just southeast of Erie. Fran was his high school head coach in western New York, and older brothers Jay and Mike found themselves in coaching, too. Mike, 50, made himself at home in Western Pennsylvania, and has been the highly successful head coach of Division III Washington & Jefferson since 2003.
“I love the city of Pittsburgh. It’s a great city,” Sirianni said, after reeling off nearly the entire 1991 Pirates roster, from Barry Bonds and Bobby Bonilla down to the likes of Jose Lind and John Smiley. “Just spent so much time there, and my brother being there still, we’ll go there for some holidays, as well, to this day. Can’t say enough good things about the people of Pittsburgh, the city, and I want my Pirates to be better, but I’m on the Phillies bandwagon now.”
Kenny could keep the seat warm for him there. Pickett said it’s cool to see the Phillies headed back to the World Series for the first time since 2009. They gave Sirianni some personal pleasure two weeks ago in the NLDS when they knocked out the Braves, who broke his heart in 1992 against the Pirates with Sid Bream’s slide.
The whole vibe around the city on the other side of the state is strong these days, with all the baseball success and the Eagles as the NFL’s last unbeaten team. Of course, Pickett wants to put an end to that, the same way another Steelers rookie quarterback did in 2004. That’s the last time the Eagles enjoyed a start like this, also the final unbeaten in the league, but Ben Roethlisberger helped send the Eagles to 7-1 with a 27-3 rout.
For Pickett, he’ll need to avoid turning the ball over against a defense that’s taking it away on 22.2% of opponent possessions, best in the league. And the Eagles just fortified their front seven even more, sending a fourth-round pick to Chicago for Bears defensive end Robert Quinn, who’s 32 and sitting at one sack on the season but had 18.5 last year.
“Possessing the ball’s gonna be huge this week. It’s a team that causes a lot of turnovers, and they don’t give the ball up, either,” Pickett said of the franchise he used to root for. “I think a huge reason as to why they’re 6-0 is how sound they are in that aspect of the game.”
Sirianni is getting the best out of third-year quarterback Jalen Hurts, who has six touchdowns passing, six rushing and just two interceptions. But Eagles general manager Howie Roseman stated a goal in 2020 to become a “quarterback factory,” an organization that could develop players at that position no matter where they’re drafted or how they’re acquired.
With that in mind, many across the turnpike went into this season wondering what the long-term plan was for Hurts. Sirianni was asked Wednesday about Pickett, who ended up going seven picks after the Eagles drafted mammoth nose tackle Jordan Davis from Georgia at No. 13 overall.
“Obviously, we did our draft homework. We do our draft homework on everybody. I just thought very highly of him coming out,” Sirianni said of Pickett. “A guy who could go through reads very fast, find the guy he’s supposed to go to, was an accurate thrower, was deceptive with his feet. He made one of the coolest plays I’ve seen in college football when he pretended to slide, then kept going in that ACC championship game. Now they’ve got the Kenny Pickett Rule.”
Sirianni even acknowledged Pickett breaking records held by Dan Marino, one last old-school Pittsburgh reference for the Eagles coach. There are still three days of preparation needed for both sides of this intrastate rivalry — taking place for the second time in three years due to the NFL adding a 17th game — but perhaps Pickett and Sirianni can find some common ground at one point down the road.
Or a lot of common ground.
“You spend a lot of weekends at grandma’s house,” said Sirianni, who grew up in Jamestown, N.Y., “and one of our favorite things to do after the family reunion was to go to a Pirates game. I definitely grew up a Pirates, Penguins and Steelers fan.”
Brian Batko: bbatko@post-gazette.com and Twitter @BrianBatko.
First Published: October 26, 2022, 9:29 p.m.
