For the second time after a loss this season, Pittsburgh Steelers’ wide receiver George Pickens finds himself under fire for actions after the game with an opposing defensive back, as well as for comments made to the media regarding a team that just beat the Pittsburgh Steelers.
This time, it’s coming out of the Week 12 Thursday Night Football loss to the Cleveland Browns in which Pickens got into a scuffle with Browns’ defensive back Greg Newsome II on the Hail Mary to end the game. He then said the Browns were not a good football team after the game.
The incident with Newsome is under review by the NFL, so the Steelers are in a hurry up and wait approach with that. As far as the post-game comments and the chirping from the Browns towards Pickens, it’s just another headache and another sign areas Pickens needs to grow and mature in.
For the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Brian Batko, who appeared on the PG’s North Shore Drive podcast Monday morning, the incidents following the Browns game were just additional signs that Pickens is a “constant headache waiting to happen” for the Black and Gold.
“Yeah, I mean, he’s a constant distraction, headache waiting to happen, it seems like,” Batko said of Pickens, according to video via the Post-Gazette on YouTube. “And Mike Tomlin talked last year about how George Pickens answered questions with us in the media about not going for the fumble, or excuse me, not going for the block for Jaylen Warren in Indy and said he needs to mature and there’s a constant growth process. And that’s not always gonna be evident to us on the outside. But man, I mean, this is once again, kind of, there’s two different lanes here. There’s the George Pickens complaining about the weather and saying the Browns aren’t good. And the Steelers got the away-game refs.
“…But blaming the conditions was so bizarre. It was really just a case of not wanting to give the Browns any credit and then calling them not a good team. Well, now you’re just amping them up even more for two weeks from now when they come to your place. I don’t see the point of, of that at all.”
How Pickens handled the end of the game on the field and then in the locker room was rather bizarre and frustrating. Growth and maturity is not linear. Prior to the scuffle with Newsome and then the comments to the media about the Browns not being good and blaming the conditions and the officials, Pickens was steadily growing and maturing, even in the game itself.
While tape did later reveal Pickens tried to trip Cleveland safety Grant Delpit, he kept his cool when Delpit yanked his mouthpiece off of his facemask, resulting in a personal foul on the Browns, giving Pittsburgh free yardage. In the past, that might not have happened.
But as things became more and more frustrating for Pickens as he didn’t get a call from the officials on what looked like pass interference on the 3rd and 4 shot play from Justin Fields, and then was run out of bounds by Newsome on the Hail Mary, things — for a lack of a better analogy — snowballed on him from there.
He’s still young at just 23 years old. He’s older, as far as NFL experience goes, having played 45 games in the NFL to date, but there’s still some immaturity there, which can be frustrating for many. It’s understandable to feel that way.
But his growth this season can’t be ignored. He’s taken proper steps, continues to play pretty hard, and has had the right attitude for the most part, outside of the time around the Week 5 Sunday Night Football game against the Dallas Cowboys. That was a hiccup. This is seemingly another one.
“And then there’s also the other lane over here of is he taking himself out of the play on the Hail Mary because he is more concerned about fighting Greg Newsome than trying to win? I mean, that’s when you start to get into the football character of it and something’s gotta change there,” Batko added.
It’s going to happen more moving forward. You take the good with the bad due to the talent. That’s how good Pickens is as a receiver
But at some point, the headaches have to cease, one way or another. Hopefully his actions during and after Thursday’s game were just a small blip on the radar. Things can’t continue to snowball from here with Pickens.
