It seems like every week there is another crazy play that WR George Pickens makes in games. A couple of them have been called back this season due to penalties, but he has a knack for making spectacular catches look routine. According to Justin Fields, those are only a small fraction of what the rest of the team sees throughout practice.
“GP, yeah, I mean he’s one of the most talented receivers I’ve played with, and I’ve played with a lot of talented guys. Just the catches that he makes in practice every day. He makes crazy catches look routine,” Fields said via Cameron Heyward’s Not Just Football podcast. “Whenever you can have a receiver that you can throw it up and trust like that and just give a chance and most of the time that he’s gonna come down with the ball, it makes my job way easier.”
If you just look at Fields’ NFL career, the praise of saying he is one of the most talented he has ever played with doesn’t seem so great. One of Fields’ big issues with the Chicago Bears was a lack of receiver talent other than his final season with DJ Moore. But if you consider the players he threw to at Ohio State, that is a different story.
Jameson Williams, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Garrett Wilson, and Chris Olave all went on to be NFL first-round picks.
Pickens has yet to truly break out as a top receiver in the league, but he definitely has the potential to. There have been glimpses of that so far this season. He only has 13 receptions for 171 yards through three games, but he has had 93 yards and a touchdown negated by penalties.
Fields specifically mentioned the 51-yard completion called back during the Denver Broncos game as an example of Pickens making his life easier.
“If all else fails and I scramble, I get in a situation kind of like last week where Denver, the play that got called back, I mean shoot. Take off downfield, throw it up one-on-one, he’s most likely gonna come down with the ball,” Fields said. “The way he tracks the ball, the way he runs his route, just his catch radius in general. It’s crazy.”
With the offensive game plan starting to open up a bit more, and other receivers like Calvin Austin III getting involved, we can expect to see bigger and better things from the Fields-Pickens connection moving forward.
