Bengals WR Scorches George Pickens, Steelers Locker Room
The George Pickens situation has caught the attention of those around the NFL after Pickens’ comments on Tuesday. However, now that Mike Tomlin and even Jaylen Warren have addressed them, the focus naturally has to go towards the Bengals for the Steelers. With all of that talk internally occurring alongside the Pickens questions, it’s interesting that a shot would come from the Benglas side about Pickens.
Bengals wide receiver Tyler Boyd dished on the Pickens conversation and believes that there is a more significant picture issue with the Steelers’ culture. He first called out the lack of effort from Pickens, but then dished on it showing a massive issue within the team’s own locker room.
“It just shows the lack of camaraderie that’s over there,” Boyd told ESPN’s Ben Baby. “I can’t really talk for anybody, but like when things ain’t going well, you still gotta perform at a high level and do what you can to help your team. I saw a clip with him on a pick, it kind of looked like he wasn’t trying to chase it down. See, I don’t go about that. That’s something that they got to deal with. When things ain’t going good, that’s when your true colors show. I like to be the same player week in, week out, whether it’s going good or bad for me.”
Boyd has experience. He was on all of those bad Bengals teams that may have seen some of these similar situations, and more than that, he is someone from Pittsburgh. Boyd played high school football at Clairton, played at the University of Pittsburgh, and knows the culture around the city. So, he has some perspectives an outsider suiting up for the Bengals would not have. That gives him the perspective to talk about George Pickens and what he is doing here. This will get classified as bulletin board material for the Steelers. In the past, Boyd has talked a lot about Pittsburgh, even saying they ‘gave up’ after Cincinnati rocked Pittsburgh 41-10 in 2021. That’s him speaking for what he believes here. He’s a candid guy
Either way, no one in Pittsburgh is happy with the offense. It sucks to be on a losing team. But what Pickens is doing can not continue or it will only fester into something much bigger. That might be Pickens’ way of protesting to send a message, but it’s actively hurting the team the way he goes about it.