scrutinizing the size

Every year, the NFL Scouting Combine is the place where college dreamers showcase their skills in front of all 32 teams with the hopes of hearing their name called on draft night. All of the invitees are put through drills that test the physical capabilities of their body as well as team interviews that explore the person beneath the pads. It’s natural that the players who get the most attention around this time are the quarterbacks. This year’s batch of signal callers is not as strong as previous classes, and the microscope is much larger on the few future stars that are there. Despite the lack of depth, there are five solid quarterbacks who would love to hear their name on night 1 of the draft; Pittsburgh’s Kenny Pickett, Ole Miss’s Matt Corral, Liberty’s Malik Willis, Cincinnati’s Desmond Ridder, and North Carolina’s Sam Howell.

When considering which of these quarterbacks will go first and who will follow after, scouts and other evaluators will look immediately at the measurables. Out of all the draft prospects at the combine, quarterbacks are heavily scrutinized for their hand size. This is a huge topic of debate as some view it as trivial to a quarterback’s overall skill set while professional scouts say it is a very important metric when determining the future gunslinger of a franchise. Teams are so concerned about it because it could determine how well a quarterback grips the ball and how much the weather could affect them. For fans of the game and football realists, hand size does not matter as the tape and the player stats will speak for themselves.

However, for Kenny Pickett, who is arguably the best quarterback in this draft, his hand size has alarmed many across the league. He has the smallest hands of all the quarterbacks in the draft and current quarterbacks in the league, just eight and a half inches. That’s much smaller than his contemporaries in Corral, Ridder, Willis, and Howell. He took on many questions following the measurement, but that has not phased him. On the popular Barstool Sports podcast Pardon My Take, Pickett laughed and said, “If I pass for 45 yards on a rope, it doesn’t say from a small hand.” In a similar instance two years ago, Cincinnati Bengals star quarterback Joe Burrow also joked on Twitter about contemplating retirement due to his small hand size.

Does it come in Handy?

In the end, hand size is an interesting metric that helps determine the value of a quarterback, but it is not the most important. Pickett’s 2021 tape dispels proponents of the metric; 4,319 passing yards, 42 touchdowns to 7 interceptions, a 67.2 completion percentage, and ownership of a couple school records previously held by the great Dan Marino. Many NFL analysts have described him as the most “pro ready” quarterback in this class, another testament to his work ethic and stellar collegiate season. If Joe Burrow can prove the doubters wrong, Pickett can surely be the next quarterback to debunk the trend. While he looks to put this little chapter of the draft process behind him, the only question left to answer is which team will pick up Pickett. No matter where he may land, he will surely want the ball in his “tiny hands” with the game on the line.