The Pittsburgh Steelers hoped that George Pickens returning would open up their offense last week. Unfortunately, his presence didn’t do much to get them past the Chiefs’ defense. His impact on the game is even a matter for debate, even if those involved have neutered certain angles.
Of interest is the interception Russell Wilson threw in the red zone last week. In-game, the broadcast faulted Pickens for not completing his route after a jam at the line. Even Wilson acknowledged after the game that he expected Pickens to do something different.
Steelers HC Mike Tomlin, however, denied that Pickens’ route had anything to do with the interception. The intercepting player, Justin Reid, also said Pickens had no influence on what he did on the play. I don’t know whether he was aware of that claim or not, but that’s not how Ben Roethlisberger saw it.
While the play is nearly a week old by now, I think Roethlisberger’s point of view as a veteran quarterback is interesting. Talking about the play on his Footbahlin podcast, he did see George Pickens as the issue.
“Basically, you’re trying to in-and-out the safeties and corners and then find the seams down the field. Issue number one is George Pickens didn’t run his route”, Roethlisberger said. “That’s issue number one. Because if he doesn’t run his route, the safety has no threat now”.
Roethlisberger acknowledged that he doesn’t know what the play was or what the defensive coverage was and was only going by what they showed on the broadcast. But he also has decades of football experience to draw from. In his analysis, from the quarterback’s perspective, George Pickens stopping his route was “90 percent of the issue”.
It’s worth listening to his podcast to hear exactly what he has to say, because he gave a pretty lengthy breakdown of his perspective. He explained how he as a quarterback would have processed his reads, suggesting Wilson worked the opposite way. Basically, he said Wilson trusted George Pickens to draw the Reid by his presence, so he looked to the other side of the field to influence the other safety.
Roethlisberger compared having Pickens in that scenario to Antonio Brown. He said in similar situations, he would actually look down Brown, because if Brown beat his coverage Roethlisberger would throw to him anyway, even if it wasn’t designed to go there.
While Reid seemed to imply that Pickens was never a part of his read in his assignment, it’s hard to know that for sure. And Tomlin saying Pickens’ route had nothing to do with it tells us nothing about Reid’s assignment, either. A layman, only watching the play—or even a Hall of Fame quarterback—might reasonably interpret that Reid read Pickens breaking off his route and acted accordingly.
“Now I can go rob that ball, because there’s nothing hold me over here. If George runs his route down the sideline, I have to honor that, because it’s George and because he’s in my zone”, Roethlisberger said, citing it as most of the problem.
But he did fault Wilson for five percent of the problem, too. “Now, Russ [Wilson] has got to see that. He can’t just blindly throw a ball in there” to Pickens, Roethlisberger said.
Whether Pickens was part of Reid’s assignment or not, or whether Wilson should have thrown the ball or not, it’s still true that Pickens giving up on his route could trigger a safety to drift to the other side of his zone and result in him making a play. It doesn’t even matter if that is what happened here. The point is, Pickens can’t put the offense in that kind of situation to begin with.
