The situation between Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin and WR George Pickens has painted both men in a less-than-positive light. Just Thursday on ESPN’s First Take, former NFL players ripped Tomlin because he was “siding with talent over the standards.” People have argued that Pickens needs to sit for his lack of effort and his conduct. Others argue that Tomlin is enabling the behavior by not providing clear consequences.
Regardless, most people are questioning whether Tomlin is losing the team as the season spirals out of control for the Steelers. However, when NFL Network insider Tom Pelissero joined the Rich Eisen Show on Friday, he pointed out that this seems to be how Tomlin approaches the wide receiver position.
“I would argue the George Pickens thing is the most Mike Tomlin-type thing that’s occurred,” Pelissero said. “Simply because, in terms of wide receivers with various levels of attitude issues, for a team that’s had Antonio Brown and Martavis Bryant and Chase Claypool, this is kind of what Mike Tomlin does.”
There is certainly a lot of evidence that Tomlin isn’t afraid of taking on headstrong personalities at the wide receiver position. Pelissero mentions probably the biggest combination of talent and what some people would call a headcase in Brown. At one point, most people would have said Brown was a surefire Hall of Famer. He had a stretch from 2013 to 2018 where his fewest yards receiving in a season was 1297 and he only had two seasons in that stretch where he did not catch double-digit touchdowns.
Then everything fell apart during the leadup to the final game of the season, and Brown was traded before the 2019 season. Brown continued to have issues for the rest of his career, never even appearing in a game with the Oakland Raiders before spending one game with the New England Patriots and appearing in parts of the 2020 and 2021 seasons with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Pelissero points to how things went with Brown as an example of the philosophy that Tomlin and the Steelers have as a whole with mercurial wide receivers.
“So you take the guy who other teams might be downgrading because of various character quirks that they have or different issues, and you say, this guy’s really talented, we can plug him in, we can get the most out of him. And at the point that goes to a different direction and we no longer can get the most out of him, then we move on.”
The Steelers, and by extension Tomlin, like to buy low on potentially troubled wide receivers. It’s almost economical, in fact. The Steelers used a sixth-round pick to draft Brown in the 2010 NFL draft. They got 11,207 yards and 74 touchdowns in 130 appearances and 103 starts over nine seasons. No one can argue that the Steelers got an incredible bargain. Then once the situation became untenable, Tomlin and the Steelers moved on.
The tale of Pickens is incredibly accelerated compared to Brown, though. It might be more comparable to the saga of Chase Claypool. The Steelers drafted Claypool in the second round of the 2020 NFL draft, and he had a dynamic rookie season. He had 62 receptions for 873 yards and nine touchdowns. Then in his second season, he had 59 catches for 860 yards but only two touchdowns and showed some issues that later came to a head. Then after eight games of the 2022 season and 14 catches for 140 yards with no touchdowns along with reports of causing some problems in the locker room, the Steelers traded him to the Chicago Bears.
Like Claypool, the Steelers drafted Pickens in the second round of the 2022 NFL draft. He showed incredible promise as a rookie as a contested-catch phenom while hauling in 52 catches for 801 yards and four touchdowns. Big things were expected of him heading into his second season, especially after posting one of the craziest catches you’ll ever see back in training camp.
However, as the offense has struggled throughout the season and playoff hopes have all but vanished, Pickens has expressed his frustrations in less-than-constructive ways. You could argue it culminated with his lack of effort on the goal line in a must-win game against the Indianapolis Colts last Saturday. Not unlike Claypool at all.
Now with the season all but over, the Steelers organization has to take a long, hard look at just about everything this offseason. Do they keep Tomlin? Do they keep Pickens? Is it possible to keep both, or do they choose one over the other? Or do they choose neither? If Tomlin stays as most expect, does he feel like he can get through to Pickens to help him better utilize his incredible talent? Or is Pickens going to be the latest in a line of talented but troubled wide receivers that get shown the door in Pittsburgh earlier than we’d like?
You can watch the entirety of the Steelers-focused conversation between Pelissero and Eisen below.
