Precisely the source and nature of Pittsburgh Steelers WR George Pickens’ frustrations is somewhat ambiguous. Yes, surely, he wants to see the ball come his way more often. Yet he walked off the field when the offense scored a go-ahead touchdown late in the fourth quarter.
In a game in which he “dropped” a touchdown earlier on by virtue of failing to complete the catch by keeping both of his feet inbounds. While he retained a grasp on the football with both hands, his failure to keep his second foot from going out of bounds—which seemed amply achievable, and raises questions about his football IQ—cost him a touchdown and the offense a net of four points. It was third down, and the Steelers settled for a field goal on the next play.
Asked by reporters yesterday if there was anything he could have done differently on that play in order to complete the catch and register the score, Pickens gave a disappointing answer that could only have been insincere. “Nah, all you can really do is just keep working”, he said, via the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
There’s a bit that we need to unpack here. First and foremost, the past year and a half has shown that his stating that all he can do is to just keep working is his go-to response when answering questions pertaining to his frustrations or negative aspects of his performance.
In other words, it’s generic filler that doesn’t really mean anything. And he cannot possibly mean that he believes there was nothing else he could have done on the play. Not for a player who calls himself the best wide receiver in the world. Hall of Fame TE Shannon Sharpe said that he showed “lazy feet” in failing to keep both inbounds despite having ample room to do so.
At the same time, it’s fair to question why we put players through these interviews in the first place. I understand sympathy will be lacking from fans for players who make large sums of money. Few tears will be shed for them if they have to talk every now and then and answer questions about a poor performance.
But I’m not sure it serves Pickens or the team much purpose to have him out there right now responding to these questions. And I don’t think his responses helped any, either, especially given that those pertaining to his frustrations were uniformly insincere.
He basically denied being frustrated while all of his players and coaches talked to the media about how it’s okay for him to be frustrated and that they’ve been talking to him about keeping his frustrations under control.
He’s simply not going to say publicly that he didn’t handle something the way that should be expected of a professional and that he needs to do better. He’s going to deny that it happened or that his actions mean what they clearly meant. That has to be the case. Because if he actually believed that couldn’t get that second foot inbounds with the appropriate amount of effort, then that says something very negative about his understanding of his own body control, even in the face of numerous examples of catches in which he displayed exceptional yet innate body control.
