There was no highlight reel catch. No 50-yard touchdown. No “wow” moment that had George Pickens buzzing Thursday the way he routinely did last year. Don’t worry, those plays are coming. He’ll be Moss’ing cornerbacks soon enough.
But the best part of Pickens’ first day of training camp was he impressed me without making any of those SportsCenter Top 10 Plays. Context is key, it’s just one day, and it’s not as if Pickens was a brand-new man. But he looked comfortable and natural and like a normal wide receiver. One with extraordinary talent.
Here’s what I mean. As a rookie, in camp and throughout the season, Pickens was static. A true Z-receiver, a go-ball machine who didn’t run any semblance of a route tree, who was largely glued to the outside. That’s who he was in college in Georgia’s offense and it worked. They won with him being that kind of guy. And his final collegiate season was almost entirely lost due to a torn ACL prior to the year, Pickens not returning until late in the year and seeing limited action.
Pittsburgh leaned on what made Pickens special, the team’s second-round pick in 2022. He was a contested-catch dynamo and vertical threat. As a rookie, that was good enough. Entering his second year, the Steelers are looking for more. Signs of that were there late in 2022, moving around more often with a more diverse route tree but I really felt it yesterday. Multiple times in practice, he was the man in motion, coming across the field and returning to his original pre-snap spot. Later in the day, he didn’t catch a deep ball but separated from Patrick Peterson on a curl for a 10-yard gain. Things you didn’t see much of a year ago.
I know that seems small. It is. A receiver goes in motion, catches a short pass, news at 11. But that’s sorta the point. It’s obvious Pickens can do the big stuff. The big play. The big gain. The big “wow.” To become a complete receiver, he has to do the small. Move around the formation, align at different spots. Catch the underneath pass. Pickens is an exciting receiver. To become a great one, he’s gotta do the boring. He did that Thursday.
Make no mistake, his overall role remains the same. Pittsburgh would be foolish to take away what he does so well, winning downfield. That’s how he puts the fears in opposing defensive backs, not wanting to end up on the wrong end of a highlight reel. He can and will do plenty of that this fall. But to truly elevate his game, to avoid being the dreaded “one-trick pony” even if that one trick is Houdini-level good, he has to round out the edges in his game. One day in, Pickens is on that path.
