George Pickens, who is best known for making spectacular catches look ordinary, suddenly couldn’t catch a fish if he had a net the size of Lake Erie in Week 18. It was easily the worst performance of his career with one reception on six targets with zero yards and at least two drops.
Mike Tomlin was asked about Pickens’ drops during his weekly press conference with one reporter commenting that you rarely see that from him.
“No you don’t,” Tomlin said via the Steelers’ YouTube channel. “But he did, and so he has to own it. But he wasn’t alone.”
TE Pat Freiermuth and WR Calvin Austin III also had drops, and the rest of the team had plenty of mistakes to go around. But Pickens isn’t the rest of the team. He is meant to be the clear WR1 who helps carry the Steelers’ passing attack. He did that for most of the season, but a hamstring injury that cost him three games has derailed the latter portion of his season.
Before the injury, he was catching about 4.6 passes per game on 7.5 targets (61.3 percent) for 70.8 yards. In the two games since returning, Pickens is catching 2.0 passes per game on 13 targets (15.4 percent) for 25 yards.
The passing attack struggled without Pickens in the lineup, but it hasn’t gotten much better since he returned. Tomlin was asked if it’s fair to say Pickens has been affected by the missed time from his hamstring injury.
“I think certainly, based on output, you could say that,” Tomlin said. “So I’m looking forward to him bouncing back and looking forward to us bouncing back with this next outing.”
The next outing is do or die for the 2024 Steelers. There are no do-overs in the playoffs. As the Steelers have found out in their last four playoff appearances, you do not get a chance to correct mistakes once in the tournament. If they lose to the Baltimore Ravens, which is what will likely happen if Pickens doesn’t rebound in a big way, this will be their fifth one-and-done postseason in a row.
This is a chance for Pickens to state his case as to why the Steelers should extend his contract this offseason. Or if they don’t have plans to extend him, it’s his chance to show the rest of the league why they should reach out to Omar Khan about a possible trade.
When Pickens is at his best, he does things that basically nobody else is capable of. The Steelers need that version of him to pull off the upset this weekend.
