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In the aftermath of Pitt’s 45-21 win over Wake Forest in the ACC Championship Game, Kenny Pickett was asked a simple question:

Would he play with the Panthers in their bowl game?

And Pickett’s answer was likewise simple:

“I plan on playing.”

Less than two weeks later, Pickett announced that he would not be participating in the Chick Fil-A Peach Bowl - not as a player, at least - and instead would be watching his teammates take on No. 10 Michigan State in Atlanta on Dec. 30.

That decision, Pickett told Panther-Lair.com, was not an easy one, but after considering a number of factors, it was the way Pitt’s record-setting quarterback chose to end his career.

“It was a tough decision,” Pickett said on The Kenny Pickett Show. “No one knows the injury history throughout the season that guys go through. When you see when I went into the tent in the Virginia game, when I went into the tent in the Wake Forest game, those aren’t pleasant visits. There’s things that we did to make sure I could go out there and play. So injuries started to - you know, little nagging things that could turn into big things, and at the end of the day, we achieved the goal of winning the ACC championship, and that was the main goal when I came back. I felt really proud of our team and proud of myself and the coaches; that’s what we said we were going to do and we went out there and did it, and I felt great with that. I just felt like I didn’t want to go out there and take one - all it takes it one hit to take yourself out of the position that you’re in. So it’s easy for anyone on the outside to say whatever they want to say, but then you get in this position and it’s a little different, obviously.

“At the end of the day, I just had too many things stacking up at this back half of the season that I felt like could potentially put me at a much larger risk in this Peach Bowl.”

Pickett said that his decision to play or not play wasn’t made before the ACC Championship Game and it wasn’t made at the podium after the win in Charlotte. The decision was made when he returned home to New Jersey and spent time with his family evaluating the options.

“To be honest with you, I pushed the whole agent process to after the season. I pushed everything else to after the season. The whole focus was winning a championship; that was the entire focus, and I think that really kept me focused on what I had to do and the job at hand. After the championship game, I never thought about not playing in the bowl game, so when I said I planned on playing at that time, that’s what the plan was. But then when I got to looking at what I had going on and everything, I just think the best decision for me and my family was to move on.”

The other factor that appeared, at least from the outside, to play into Pickett’s decision was the departure of Mark Whipple, who resigned as Pitt’s offensive coordinator three days after the conference championship game.

But Pickett, who is very close with Whipple, said his decision was made more on the injury risk than the change in play-caller.

“That wasn’t a huge part, to be honest with you. I already had a conversation with him and people know by now that I do my due diligence and my research on making these decisions. But his decision came and I knew it was coming; that wasn’t a shock to me. I talked to him before it hit the Internet and took off. But that wasn’t anything that I was taking into consideration with my decision to play.”

So Pickett ends his career with two Coastal Division titles, one ACC championship and a host of school passing records that will likely never be broken. He isn’t completely done with the Panthers, though; he plans to be at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta in nine days to support his teammates with more than just words of encouragement.

“I’ll be down at the Peach Bowl. I’ll be helping Nick (Patti) out, or whatever quarterback’s in there. I’ll probably be up in the box, be able to talk to Nick in the headset and relay what I’m seeing. Just kind of be an extra set of eyes. I have a lot of experience seeing defenses, so I want to help him out anyway I can.”