(Photo by Justin Berl/Getty Images)
Pitt quarterback Kenny Pickett's small hands have been a big talking point of late, and I don't expect that to change anytime soon with the NFL Combine coming up in March.
Pickett didn't have his hands measured at the Senior Bowl because he's double-jointed, so his thumb naturally points in an odd direction, and he's doing extra exercises to get an accurate measurement at the combine, according to Tom Pelissero of the NFL Network.
Mike Renner of Pro Football Focus said on 93.7 The Fan on Tuesday that Pickett has the smallest hands of any quarterback they've ever seen. In 30 years of data. Thirty years of quarterback hand measurements. "I would be worried about his hand size," Renner said.
Nick Farabaugh of Steelers Now has heard that Pickett's hand size is 8 1/4 inches. Farabaugh notes that if that's his hand size, it's a historical outlier for most quarterbacks. Pickett also wears gloves on both hands, which probably has to do with his small hands. However, Burrow and Kyler Murray also have small hands, and they have turned out fine as quarterbacks in the NFL. So, it's really not that big of a deal, but something to monitor.
Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi thinks it's a complete joke that Pickett is getting criticized because of his hand size.
"It's a complete joke, measuring this, measuring that," Narduzzi told Andrea Adelson of ESPN. If they want to measure anything, what they should do is do open heart surgery, go check and see how big that chest cavity is and how big the heart is inside that chest, if you really want to analyze. What are we talking about? There's nobody out there who's going to play harder and put everything he's got into it than Kenny Pickett. This kid doesn't have a flaw. That's what [scouts] do. It's the same thing at the combine, they're going to find something else to pick on him. It's not going to be a factor."