Kenny Pickett a top prospect, hands down

By going to Pittsburgh and staying an extra year, the 23-year-old Pickett made himself perhaps the first quarterback in this year’s class. Even if he’s not a Joe Burrow-like prospect, he had a similar senior-year burst, and has impressed coaches here with his bearing. He has a good arm, not a great one, but is an accurate passer with good instincts, and that natural sense of leadership.

“Pickett, he’s been good,” said Jets head coach Robert Saleh, who is overseeing the National team and Pickett this week. “He’s been good in the room; he’s obviously putting in the work.”

He also has the benefit of coming from a pro-style offense at Pitt, which could make his transition to the NFL easier. Mostly, he’s shown the knack for making plays, as evidenced by the fake-slide touchdown in Charlotte, which the NCAA quickly outlawed. But at the time, there was a play there, and Pickett made it.

“Nah, I don’t think you can practice something like that and go to a championship game and try to execute it,” he said. “It was just kind of a natural thing. Can’t really tell you why I did it or how I did it; it just kind of came into place.”

Now, he’s in the process of convincing teams he’s worth a high pick. He had an informal meeting with some Panthers scouts already, and will sit down for a longer interview with them later in the week, where he’ll be able to make his case to be their first-rounder.

“The strategy is to be myself, I think,” Pickett said of the interviews here. “At the end of the day, they want to hear you as a person first, and asking a lot of personal questions and getting into the offense and showing them your football IQ. Really, it’s just be myself, and be very detailed in my descriptions.

“The biggest thing (for me) is consistency. Everyone wants to say that last season was kind of a flash in the pan deal, but I think if you play at a high level for 13 games, I don’t think that’s by luck. So I want to come down here and show how consistent I am, and that I can play at a high level.”