Saunders: Let’s Be Real, George Pickens Was Benched and He Deserved It
Regardless of what Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin wants to call it, George Pickens was benched on Sunday, and he deserved it.
PITTSBURGH — The Pittsburgh Steelers benched wide receiver George Pickens at points during Sunday’s loss to the Dallas Cowboys.
They’re just not calling it that.
Pickens played in just 59% of the team’s offensive snaps against the Cowboys, the lowest percentage he played in a game in his entire career.
But Mike Tomlin is insisting that it’s due to “snap management,” and not any sort of punishment for Pickens.
“It’s just a snap management thing in an effort to be more productive,” Tomlin said. “In today’s game, regarding analytics, we do it across a lot of positions, particularly when you look at the totality of a 17-game schedule. I’d imagine Cam Heyward, for example, is playing less snaps than he has. We’re just trying to grow and get optimum productivity among some individuals and going about the best means of doing so.”
If your eyes briefly rolled back into your head while reading that nonsense, its not your fault.
To start, the idea that 23-year-old George Pickens needs his snaps reduced in order to be more effective to say in shape is patently absurd. Especially when you consider that 28-year-old Van Jefferson, who had his season ruined by injuries in 2023, played more snaps. The other receivers, vastly inferior players, all playing more than him gives the game up.
Especially when you consider that this load management issue came completely out of nowhere. Pickens played at least 75% of the team’s offensive snaps in every game last season. Last week against the Indianapolis Colts, he played 86%.
“I’m just more sensitive to that broader discussion,” Tomlin said.
Come on, man.
First of all, Pickens was not in the game for three of the first six plays when the Steelers got the ball to start the second half. Was he exhausted from halftime? It’s not even plausible.
It’s not as if Pickens hasn’t deserved to be benched. He pouts endlessly on the sideline. At one point while he was benched, he was laying with head back, not paying any attention to the game, while no teammate would sit next to him on the bench. He spiked his helmet over the bench at one point. He swung a Cowboys player to the ground by his facemask after the final whistle of the game. And all of that came after he wrote on his eye black “Open Fucking Always” before the nationally televised game.
Tomlin acknowledged the overall behavioral problems with Pickens, as he did last year when he repeatedly went off not he sideline and also refused to block for Jaylen Warren during a loss to the Indianapolis Colts.
“There’s certainly things that I’m open to addressing, and will and do, I just don’t detail it in settings like this because it’s business between he and I in terms of his growth and development as a player and as a man,” Tomlin said. “I just don’t think it aids that growth and development to address it in open settings such as this.”
But Tomlin did finally give away his intentions at the end. Asked specifically about Pickens running at less than full speed on his routes, after several clips circulated from the Cowboys game showing what appeared to be very low effort, Tomlin said that Pickens running speed was a part of the decision to trim his snaps.
“It’s certainly part of the load management discussion,” Tomlin said.
There it is.
So in Mike Tomlin’s world, he’s not benching George Pickens. He’s simply seeing what the rest of us are seeing, that Pickens does not appear to even particularly care about running hard while he’s on the field and saying something along the lines of, “you must be tired, why don’t you take a breather.”
It’s Tomlin prerogative to call Pickens’ benching what he wants to call it, just like it’s his prerogative on whether he wants to discuss the details of the punishments he lays out. It was reported after the season last year that Pickens was fined over $200,000 for his actions. Tomlin never announced those.
It’s fair to assume that there is some behind-the-scenes punishment going on in addition to the clear public lack of playing time. Tomlin can take the heat for his obvious public obfuscation. He’s a professional that gets paid well to deal with the ire of the fanbase. But he’d better make it clear to the rest of the players in the locker room that he finds Pickens’ actions unacceptable and he’s doing something about it.
Multiple sources told Steelers Now that the team is sick of Pickens’ antics and would support more open forms of punishment being laid out from Tomlin. The fact that no one would even talk to him on the bench says a lot.
RELATED: Former Steelers Player tells George Pickens to ‘Grow Up’
The Steelers traded Diontae Johnson away this spring, in part because they were worried about his influence on Pickens. They knew they had a culture problem in the wide receivers room. They wanted to separate Johnson from Pickens before they have to make a decision next offseason about whether or not to offer Pickens a significant contract extension.
Maybe they traded the wrong one. Maybe they were both problems. Either way, it’s clear now that Pickens should not be a part of the team’s future plans.
Read This Next
