Should George Pickens not play tomorrow for the Steelers, it certainly won’t be by his decision. He clearly wants to play—has wanted to play for weeks. And from the looks of it, he appears healthy enough to play. He knows, however, that it’s not his decision.
“I feel good, but who makes the decisions is the coaches and the doctors”, Pickens told Ray Fittipaldo of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He and other reporters have described him moving around well, as personal anecdotes. “Whatever they tell me to do, I’m doing”.
Not only does Pickens feel like he can play, he also feels like he can give the Steelers a full game. HC Mike Tomlin almost always preaches conditioning and practice time when it comes to how much most injured players might play in return from injury.
But Pickens isn’t worried, when it comes to him, even coming off a reported Grade 2 hamstring injury. “That was three weeks ago”, he told Fittipaldo. “I played for the rest of the season. I don’t think my conditioning will be a problem”.
Over the course of the season, George Pickens has averaged about 80 percent of the Steelers’ offensive snaps. There have been some fluctuations, perhaps for a variety of reasons, but his numbers have trended upward. Across the three games played prior to his hamstring injury, he was averaging about 90 percent of the snaps.
In fact, Pickens’ playing time started trending more consistently upward since Russell Wilson took over the Steelers’ offense. Of his seven highest snap percentages on the year, six are in the six games Pickens played with Wilson. And he has played at least 79 percent of the snaps in each of his six games with Wilson.
It also stands to reason that Pickens might play more against an opponent like the Kansas City Chiefs. This game has the potential to become a shootout, and that means passing the ball. The Chiefs also have a good defense against which it’s hard to sustain drives, and Pickens can deliver drive-shortening splash.
The Steelers’ offense has struggled without George Pickens in the lineup. In a turn of events nobody could have foreseen, Calvin Austin III, Mike Williams, and Van Jefferson don’t make up a threatening receiving corps as the star vehicles.
A part of me believes that the Steelers wouldn’t play Pickens if they expected him to be very limited, though. Maybe he doesn’t play 60-plus snaps, and they limit him more to obvious passing situations. But whatever he can deliver, they should gladly accept.
