Tanner McKee was asked Thursday night if he feels like he’s earned the Eagles’ No. 2 quarterback spot.
“That’s not my decision,” he said.
Then he paused and smiled and said, “I wish it was.”
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So do a lot of Eagles fans.
A combination of McKee's terrific performance against the Patriots and a dreadful evening by Kenny Pickett in the Eagles’ 14-13 win at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., combined to take what was already an interesting competition into a full-blown doozy of a QB controversy.
Pickett, a 26-year-old 1st-round pick with 24 NFL starts under his belt, was overmatched and ineffective, repeatedly hanging onto the ball too long and scrambling aimlessly around the pocket while pressure closed in.
McKee, a 24-year-old 6th-round pick who’s never played a regular-season snap, was confident and sharp, firing quickly and decisively, avoiding pressure and even leading the Eagles on a game-winning 4th-quarter touchdown drive.
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By any measure, McKee outplayed Pickett, and it wasn’t even close. Maybe Pickett deserves to be No. 2, but we haven’t seen it.
“Kenny is No. 2 and Tanner is our No. 3, and I am really happy they’re both on the roster,” Nick Sirianni said postgame.
“They’re both doing a nice job. I think Tanner made some really nice throws down the field today with some good anticipation. I’ll have to look at the tape of what happened, but they both had good practices to this date. I thought they both played solid today.”
Understandable that Sirianni is going to protect Pickett, who the Eagles acquired from the Steelers in March. But McKee looked fantastic in two separate 2nd-half stints with backup receivers. He engineered a game-winning 70-yard drive capped by a Kendall Milton TD run and a go-ahead two-point conversion pass to Ainias Smith with 4 ½ minutes left.
McKee has gotten sporadic 2nd-team reps at practice, but generally that’s been to keep him involved on days when the third offense hasn’t gotten much time.
Asked about the competition between himself and McKee, Pickett said: “They are continuing to mix groups ups and letting guys play with different groups. I am just taking it one day at a time, and continue to play and put good tape out there and continue to play well and progress with the offense.”
McKee was impressive last summer. He’s taken his game to another level this summer. With his 6-6, 230-pound frame, strong arm and quick trigger, he really looks like an NFL quarterback.
“I feel like mentally I can see the defense a lot cleaner (than last year),” McKee said. “I think that one of the biggest things going from college to the NFL is post-snap movement. I feel like they are always going to lie to your eyes pre-snap, and so I feel like I am very comfortable seeing post-snap movement and being able to adjust off of that. I think that was a big growth point for me last year and I’m going to continue to grow on that.”
It was a little bit of a surprise when the Eagles acquired Pickett, who the Steelers gave up on just two years after making him the 20th pick in the 2022 draft.
Pickett is the only quarterback in NFL history to win at least 14 games in his first two seasons and then go to a new team in his third season.
“I think they do a great job of communicating and they told me they were going to get another quarterback and we were going to compete,” McKee said. “Kenny’s been a great teammate, and we are going to continue to compete for the whole year.”
The biggest difference between the two quarterbacks Thursday night was how they dealt with pressure. Pickett took four sacks for 24 yards on 17 dropbacks and even took a sack on a 4th-and-8, a cardinal sin for a quarterback. He also had two scrambles that turned into pointless three-yard gains.
McKee wasn’t sacked and really didn’t come close. By the time the pressure got close, he had already delivered the football.
Pickett was facing the Patriots’ better pass rushers, so you have to take that into account. But his inability to deal with pressure is concerning.
“The things that kind of stalled some of the drives (when Pickett played) were some of the pressures we got,” Sirianni said. “We didn’t run it great in that area either for some different reasons that we’ll obviously look at.”
Pickett played the first half and went 11-for-13 but for only 67 total yards and 43 net yards. That’s 3.3 net yards per pass play.
McKee was 15-for-19 for 140 yards with no sacks. That’s 7.4 net yards per pass play.
Pickett’s only completion over 11 yards was a screen pass that Will Shipley turned into a 19-yard gain. McKee had completions of 12, 13, 16, 23 and 28 yards.
“We rotated in a lot of guys tonight, so we got to play with a bunch of different people and different groups,” Pickett said.
“I don’t think we were as clean as we would have liked to be. I think we were better and smoother … in the first game, so it is something this week we are going to have to iron out for the third game.”