Due in no small part to his pre-draft profile, Pittsburgh Steelers WR George Pickens is always going to be under the microscope when it comes to managing his emotions. He is a player who can run hot at times, though usually you see his frustrations when he’s not making plays.
He had a moment or two in yesterday’s win over the Los Angeles Rams, but it wasn’t because he wasn’t getting the ball—he had a team high in targets, catches, and yards. But he admitted that the Rams were trying to get under his skin, and he knows he allowed them to.
Hopefully, he also knows that he can’t let it happen again, but if it does, former Steeler Chris Hoke thinks something needs to be done to address it. “If you don’t discipline them, you enable them”, he said on the KDKA Steelers Extra Point postgame show.
“They’ve got to stop that. At some point that player’s got to understand that this is going to hurt the team”, he added. And he wasn’t a fan of Pickens’ postgame comments acknowledging that he allowed Rams players to get to him
“That becomes who you are. They know that you’re easily provoked and so they’re going to antagonize you, they’re going to try to get you out of your game so they get those 15-yard penalties that hurt your team”, Hoke pointed out.
And there’s certainly truth to that. You know which players you can’t get to, and the ones you can, you pick at them and prod them. Yeah, they might make their plays on you, but all you need to do is make them relax their discipline and they can hurt themselves and their team.
Pickens was flagged twice during the game. The first time was for an illegal blindside block early, which may have contributed to Los Angeles’ eagerness to chirp at him, later, in the fourth quarter, he wiped out his own 18-yard reception with a post-play taunting penalty, getting in the face of former teammate CB Ahkello Witherspoon, who was guarding him.
“The reality is you can yell at him all you want, but until you discipline him – and you don’t have to sit him a whole game – sit him down for a series”, Hoke insisted. “That will send a message in my mind, but if you go out there and you yell at him and you put him right back in, you have the response that you got from George Pickens after the game where he’s completely innocent. It’s other guys, it’s their fault that I got the 15-yard penalty. It’s their fault that I reacted this way”.
Now, to be fair, that’s not an accurate portrayal of what Pickens actually said, even if he still deserves full blame for the taunting. All he said was that it was the first time he really observed a team actively trying to get under his skin. He didn’t blame anybody else. He said he knows you can’t react to that—but that you do take a look and see who’s doing it.
But they say actions speak louder than words, anyway, and Pickens still made a dumb, immature mistake. It ultimately didn’t hurt the Steelers because they still scored a touchdown on that drive, but he does need to play with more emotional discipline. He’s a guy who can’t seem to help but ride that emotional rollercoaster. How will head coach Mike Tomlin apply the brakes?
