PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – The Steelers have one wide receiver who is a threat every game. One wide receiver who teams game plan against, want to minimize. That receiver got just over half of the team’s offensive snaps in the 20-17 loss to Dallas.
The explanation of why George Pickens played the fewest snaps he’s played all year, by a wide margin, was as remarkable as the stat.
“We just wanted to minimize his reps in an effort to get more productivity,” head coach Mike Tomlin said after an emotional loss. “We’re just trying to rep manager in terms of the totality of the big picture.”
Tomlin is saying they want to take their best receiver and play him less. He said it’s like with Cam Heyward. The 35-year-old who deals with contact every play and has been in the league for 14 years and coming off a major groin injury last season. If you play him less, the output is greater because he’s fresh.
According to Jon Ledyard on X, the again, 35-year-old Heyward played 55 snaps Sunday while the 23-year-old Pickens played 34 snaps. Granted the Steelers offense had fewer opportunities, but this stat doesn’t match up with the reason the head coach gave for limiting Pickens.
Then Tomlin said this.
“He wasn’t less of a focal point in terms of our intentions of what we wanted to do on offense, but we did want to cut his reps a little bit in an effort to get higher quality play just in general.”
Understandable if you don’t want to play too much of a one-trick pony, but Pickens is the only consistently multi-trick pony you have at wide receiver.
Pickens caught three passes for 26 yards, one on a dump off on the final play of the game. He was targeted a team-high seven times, but how is playing him only 34 snaps going to help your team win. Van Jefferson had 47 snaps, Calvin Austin had 44 according to Ledyard.
Here is another Tomlin take.
“There is no underlying story, to be quite honest with you.”
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It was also caught by a few of us in the press box that Pickens spent time in the second half slumped over on the bench, almost always by himself. Twice it was noticed he came to sit on the bench and each time a player sitting on it simultaneously got up and left as Pickens sat down.
This could be coincidence, but one of those players didn’t get up to go into the game, but got up to sit on another bench and the other just walked away.
It’s a Steelers team so desperate for receiving help it got dangled along by Brandon Aiyuk for weeks and reportedly has now entered the Davante Adams sweepstakes as the disgruntled receiver wants out of Las Vegas. They know they need help at the position, yet play Pickens 59% of the time on offense in a game where they threw more times than they rushed.
Tomlin may claim there is not an underlying story, but there is something more than just giving him game rest. If they don’t figure out the Pickens situation, the offense isn’t going anywhere no matter who is at quarterback.
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