Statistically, Pittsburgh Steelers WR George Pickens had a quiet season finale. Zero targets, zero catches, as the team pounded the rock, threw to their running backs, and kept the passing game underneath in a rainy 17-10 win over the Baltimore Ravens. Pickens still contributed, blocking and being a selfless teammate, but the stats weren’t there.
In one sense, that benefitted him. Avoiding short 5-yard receptions didn’t weigh down his yards-per-reception number, ending the season averaging 18.1 yards per grab. That led the entire NFL for 2023, becoming the first Steeler in well over a decade to do so.
Entering Week 18, Pickens was just behind the San Francisco 49ers’ Brandon Aiyuk. But Aiyuk kept things underneath in his finale: three catches for 25 yards and ended the year with a 17.9-yard average. That allowed Pickens, by catching nothing in Week 18, to slide into the top spot. For 2023’s qualifying receivers, here are the top five players in yards per reception.
2023 YPC Leaders
1. George Pickens – 18.1 YPC
2. Brandon Aiyuk – 17.9 YPC
3. Amari Cooper – 17.4 YPC
4. Noah Brown – 17.2 YPC
5. D.K. Metcalf – 16.9 YPC
In the Steelers’ context, Pickens is the first player to lead the league in yards per reception since Mike Wallace in 2009, his rookie season, where he averaged 19.4 yards per reception. Players like Antonio Brown were elite talents, but their volume brought down their average. It’s hard to catch 110 passes and still average an incredibly high per-reception figure. Pickens ended the year with 63 receptions; Wallace in 2009 had just 39.
Pickens accomplishes something Lynn Swann nor John Stallworth ever did. Those two never led the league in yards per reception, a surprising tidbit considering their talent and downfield ability. Swann finished fourth in 1979, while Stallworth finished tenth the year before. The earlier in football history you go, the higher the averages are, reflecting an era when teams largely ran the ball. When they threw, they made their chances count, targeting deep shots versus defenses selling out to stop the ground game. For the past two years, the NFL leader in yards-per-reception sat at 18.1. In every year from 1942 to 1995, the league leader sat somewhere in the 20’s (the record, if you’re wondering, is 32.7 by Boston’s Don Currivan in 1947).
For Pittsburgh, he is the tenth instance of a Steeler leading the league in this category. Wallace was the most recent. Two years before him was Santonio Holmes in 2007, who averaged 18.1, just like Pickens. He became the first since Jim Smith in 1982. In 1973, there was underrated speedster Ron Shanklin. In the pre-Noll era, there were notable names like Roy Jefferson in 1966, Buddy Dial in 1960 and 1963, Jimmy Orr in 1958, and Elbie Nickel was the first in 1949.
While Pickens’ vertical ability remains his calling card, he greatly improved on one of his sophomore-year goals. Improving his YAC. As a rookie, he was the league’s worst after-the-catch receiver, in part due to his route tree that was almost exclusively vertical and offered little chance to make plays pinned against the sideline. Making the catch itself produced the big play. This year, his route tree was more varied, and he did damage post-catch, highlighted by his 86-yard slant for a touchdown in Week 16 against the Cincinnati Bengals.
His YAC per receptions improved from 2.0 yards as a rookie to 6.2 as a sophomore, the fourth-highest of any wide receiver with at least 50 catches in 2023. For as much negativity that existed throughout this season, much of it self-inflicted, Pickens improved as a player. And he ended the year doing all the right things as a receiver and as a teammate. Positive assets to build upon for a third year that could show him take even more steps forward.
