The Pittsburgh Steelers’ season ended in disaster, with five straight losses and an embarrassing one-and-done in the Wild Card Round of the playoffs at the hands of the bitter division rival Baltimore Ravens. In his end-of-season press conference, head coach Mike Tomlin promised changes “on a lot of levels” going into the 2025 season.
Steelers fans have a lot of questions on what those changes might be. Will the Steelers move on from defensive coordinator Teryl Austin? Or will they part ways with offensive coordinator Arthur Smith after just one season? Will they trade a big-name player on defense like Minkah Fitzpatrick or T.J. Watt? Will they try to draft a quarterback in the first round? There are a lot of questions, and as of now, not a lot of answers. Fortunately, the current NFL season isn’t even over yet, so the team has time to strategize and find answers to some of these tough questions.
Ed Bouchette — former Steelers writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette — joined 93.7 The Fan with Jason Mackey on Friday evening to discuss some potential moves that the Steelers could make this offseason. While some decisions could be difficult, an easy one in Bouchette’s mind is to trade George Pickens.
“I’d certainly get rid of the wide receiver one way or the other,” Bouchette told Mackey. “For me, I’d want to get rid of him tomorrow.”
Mackey jokingly asked if Bouchette was talking about Van Jefferson, clearly understanding that he was referring to Pickens.
“You’re not going to trade [Pickens] for a third-round pick. I’m not talking that. I’m talking about getting some real value for him. If you can get it, I’d do it…You’re spinning your wheels. You might as well try something different.”
George Pickens’ future with the team is one of the most complicated decisions the Steelers will face either this year or at the end of the 2025-26 season. Pickens is an enigma. At times, he’ll make catches like Lynn Swann’s “Circus Catch” in Super Bowl X, and it looks easy for him. But then he’ll have games where he can’t create any separation, and he’ll end up jogging through routes and finishing with a stat line like he did against the Bengals in Week 18 (six targets, one catch, zero yards).
His antics on and off the field add another layer to the equation. I could write 2,000 words on the instances where Pickens’ immaturity took over, and he’s only been with the Steelers for three years. He scraps with opposing defenders well after the whistle, excessively celebrates big plays leading to penalties, posts cryptic social media messages, talks back to reporters, and he possibly even showed up late to the Christmas Day game against the Kansas City Chiefs, tardiness that’s reportedly commonplace.
Despite those issues, Pickens is undeniably the most talented receiver the Steelers have had since Antonio Brown. Brown had similar attitude issues to Pickens, but Tomlin and the Steelers were still able to get him to produce a Hall of Fame-level resume when he was in Pittsburgh.
Pickens has pushed back on media speculation of a trade, recently taking to Instagram to tell the media to “stop lying for clicks.”
The question remains: Do the Steelers take a risk on Pickens, paying him around $30 million per year if they decide to re-sign him going into his final contract year? Or do they move on from Pickens and his problems, looking to trade him for great value, as Bouchette proposes?
Either way, the team has major needs at receiver and many paths they can take to address it.
