Who’s the backup QB? Kenny Pickett is confident he’ll be as he learns the Eagles’ system

Less than five months into his Eagles career, Kenny Pickett is already well acquainted with one of Nick Sirianni’s core values.

The 26-year-old quarterback, the starter with the Pittsburgh Steelers for the last two seasons, has observed that Sirianni’s emphasis on competition in his meeting-room messages carries over to training camp practices. For the quarterbacks in particular, every practice provides a chance to compete, whether they’re working on their accuracy with the throwing nets or going head-to-head with the defense in team drills.

“They’re great guys, and it’s a lot of fun to be a part of a QB room that likes to enjoy it every day,” Pickett said Tuesday. “I think every guy loves being in that room, and we’re all having fun pushing each other.”

Those opportunities to compete will continue on Friday when the Eagles visit the Baltimore Ravens in their first preseason game (7:30 p.m., NBCSP+). Sirianni hasn’t confirmed who will start or play, but both Pickett and Tanner McKee, the Eagles’ third-string quarterback last season, will likely take plenty of reps throughout the preseason.

While everything in camp is framed as a competition, the roles at quarterback going into the season are well-defined. With Jalen Hurts as their franchise starting quarterback, the Eagles acquired Pickett and a 2024 fourth-round pick from the Steelers in March for a 2024 third-round pick and two 2025 seventh-round picks to fill Marcus Mariota’s vacated role as the backup. The remaining two years on Pickett’s contract are fully guaranteed ($4.61 million total), according to Over the Cap.

That hasn’t stopped speculation surrounding the potential that McKee, a 2023 sixth-round pick out of Stanford, could unseat Pickett for the second-string job. Monday’s practice fueled that theory when McKee took several reps with the second-team offense in team drills, although both quarterbacks experienced highs and lows in practice.

On Tuesday, Kellen Moore pushed back on any link between McKee’s “awesome job” in camp and his stint with the twos.

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“Really, that’s two completely independent things,” the new offensive coordinator said before practice. “It’s not necessarily [that] they’re associated with each other. I think both those guys are having really good camps.

“I think sometimes when you’re a younger guy, sometimes we just like to put you in some different situations where you’re with different guys on the field, whether it be with a second group or a first group, all those different things. You try and mix and match these things just to give yourself different perspective for these guys. So, Kenny’s handled it awesome. Tanner’s handling it awesome.”

McKee hardly took any reps with the second-team offense on Tuesday. Still, the players are seemingly a lot less focused on who they’re playing with in practice and more concerned with their improvement and comfort in the offense.

For Pickett, his transition to a new team and a new scheme has been defined by learning and unlearning. While he’s growing familiar with Moore’s system, he’s also tasked with removing the terminology of schemes past from his memory, which he described as the most difficult aspect of the process.

But the preseason isn’t expected to offer many glimpses into new wrinkles that Moore has installed in the offense. Instead, the games will require Pickett to work with a variety of players on the second and third teams, which he said he has experience doing with the Steelers in the preseason.

Pickett said he’s looking to play consistent, clean football in those exhibition games, regardless of the players he’s working with on offense.

“You’ve just got to get acclimated with a lot of different groups,” Pickett said. “And it puts you in different situations. Each group plays differently, so you just have to be ready for everything.”

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Although the offense is new for McKee, too, he said he feels “a lot more confident in the system” as a returning player to the team. He explained that he has a better idea of what to expect on the field, allowing him to think less and play freely. The preseason will provide McKee with a chance to put that sense of comfort and confidence on display as he looks to solidify a role on the initial 53-man roster.

“The biggest goal [going into camp] for me was prove to my teammates, the coaches, and everybody that I’m somebody that they can rely on whenever they need me to,” McKee said. “So I’m just trying to prove that every day in how I work and how I play, and just my connection with the guys on the team. We have a lot of great guys that love to compete, and so I’m just trying to get better every day.”

The quarterbacks compete on the field and assist each other away from it. McKee described Pickett as a “student of the game,” a characteristic he gleaned through their conversations about the offense as they help each other grasp the system.

“Obviously, I knew a little bit more of the offense,” McKee said. “But then with all the different changes, we’ve been in the room talking to each other, ‘Hey, what do you think about this? How would you read this? What have you done in the past, and how can we kind of merge that into the offense now?’

“And so just having those conversations back and forth and how we can be on the same page as a quarterback room and grow and progress.”