I posed the question earlier this week how Pittsburgh Steelers WR George Pickens would respond on the field to the turmoil and criticism he has faced off the field in the past week. It turns out, pretty well. In fact, he had the best day by a Steelers wide receiver in terms of yardage in more than half a decade.
His 195 receiving yards in a 34-11 win over the Cincinnati Bengals are the most by a Steeler since WR Antonio Brown caught 11 passes for 213 yards in Week 14 of the 2017 season against the Baltimore Ravens. That was the Ben Roethlisberger 506-yard game in a 39-38 win.
In the first half alone, Pickens gained 129 receiving yards on just three catches, including an 86-yard touchdown at the start of the game. That was the longest offensive play in the NFL this season, not just for the Steelers.
He came back late in the half with an equally impressive 44-yard grab, keeping his feet inbounds. And he added a 66-yard touchdown on another breakaway in the second half, thus also marking his first NFL game with multiple touchdowns.
That made him just the second player in team history with multiple touchdown receptions of 60-plus yards in the same game, along with Louis Lipps in 1988. With his big game, Pickens also went over 1,000 receiving yards on the season for the first time of his career and became the first for the Steele to accomplish the feat since 2021 when WR Diontae Johnson reached the Pro Bowl in QB Ben Roethlisberger’s final season.
In his previous eight games heading into today, Pickens only had 25 receptions for 314 yards and one touchdown, that score coming eight games ago. He was averaging under 40 yards per game and just over three receptions, and obviously not finding the end zone.
Throughout that time, his frustrations were building, and it reached a new peak during Pittsburgh’s recent three-game losing streak. His efforts were heavily questioned throughout sports media this past week, many, including local reporters, calling for head coach Mike Tomlin to bench him.
He chose not to, a decision that he stated publicly, and at least on the field, it paid dividends. The bottom line is he is paid to produce on the field, and he clearly did that when they needed him to most in a pivotal late-season divisional matchup against the Bengals.
A great game on the field doesn’t make everything else go away, of course, and many were making that argument long before this game was even played. Tomlin will be the first, I’m sure, to come out and say that Pickens still has plenty of growing to do on and off the field.
Tomlin might not take kindly to Pickens pointing at a defender who missed a tackle at the end of his second touchdown, for example, in terms of sportsmanship. And his facing the camera afterward signaling that he’s not listening to the critics might not exactly have been what he had in mind.
But the prevailing argument has always been the same: the talent is there. Figure out how to get it out of him. You get him going and you start winning games, that’s how you keep the volatile personality of a young man still growing up in check.
