Second-year Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver George Pickens’ frustrations continue to mount, this time with those who are questioning his effort coming out of the road loss to the Indianapolis Colts.
Speaking to reporters Tuesday from the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex on the South Side, Pickens pushed back against criticism regarding his lack of effort on a Jaylen Warren run in the first quarter.
“Yeah, all the people that’s questioning my effort, they don’t play football,” Pickens said to reporters, according to a tweet from ESPN’s Brooke Pryor. “They do what y’all [the media] do.”
One day after head coach Mike Tomlin stated that the situation wasn’t good enough, Pickens continued to try and defend the non-block in which he was seen standing around watching Warren get tackled by his Pickens’ guy.
For Pickens, he says he was simply trying to avoid a serious injury, one that Houston rookie wide receiver Tank Dell suffered a few weeks ago when he broke his ankle after getting rolled up on.
“I was just trying to prevent the Tank Dell situation, the same thing that happened to [him]. I ain’t want to get an injury,” Pickens said, according to a tweet from Pryor. ‘When you stay on the block too low, you can get ran up on very easily.”
While it is a risk that comes with blocking, especially at the receiver position, Pickens using aiming to avoid an injury as an excuse for his poor blocking is ridiculous. So, is Pickens just not going to sustain a block again moving forward? If he’s worried about getting rolled up on, get off the field.
Let someone else in there who wants to put in the effort and land the block, trying to help his teammate score a touchdown.
Pickens’ poor effort came just three weeks after fellow wide receiver Diontae Johnson did a similar thing against the Cincinnati Bengals on a Warren fumble. Johnson, to his credit, atoned for the incident against the Bengals, owning up to it in the media and in front of his teammates. Pickens took a different tact Tuesday, blaming the media and pushing back on those who have “never played football” and won’t ever be in the NFL.
Pickens has a lot of maturing to do and needs quite a bit of public relations and media training. There’s a thing called accountability, and Pickens has none of it. It’s always someone else’s problem. He’s never at fault.
There is always an excuse for something he does. Not blocking on a play because he was trying to avoid injury is right up there with some of his best work when it comes to excuse making. Everyone can see the BS he put out Saturday, yet he’s going to stand behind it and have that be his truth.
It’s not just the media that criticized him, either. Tomlin cited the effort on the play as an obvious area of room for growth and improvement. Pickens can try and blame the media all he wants, but the film never lies, and he just flat-out gave up on the play. There’s no excusing that, just like there was no excusing Johnson and him initially saying he “didn’t see” Warren fumble the football.
