My priors on George Pickens coming into the year were pretty simple. The Steelers are generally good at drafting wide receivers. Pickens looked amazing in college when he was healthy. But I believed he was probably going to be a year away from fantasy relevance because the Steelers offense is, well, not a great place for a wideout to establish himself. Bad offensive line. Plenty of target competition. Mitch Trubisky. Matt Canada. People smarter than me watch the Steelers offense and have no idea what they’re actually trying to do.
But one of my biggest beliefs about the current state of fantasy football is that when there is a real debate on an issue, by the end of 17 games, both sides will be right at some point. Carson Wentz played well enough to be a waiver wire darling in Week 1 and is now struggling. Ezekiel Elliott never should have been projected to lose his starting role to Tony Pollard ... but Pollard has been empirically better than him despite Elliott now actually being healthy. D’Andre Swift did lose a lot of his short target share to Amon-Ra St. Brown ... and it didn’t really matter because he’s been good enough to weather the storm.
So when it comes to hot waiver wire target Pickens, I approach it with my priors but admit that I think ultimately both sides can be right.
But where I ultimately land is that I’d rather have him in a month. Let’s dig into the data.
Season-to-Date
It was evident that Pickens was good well before the season, as the preseason and training camp reports showed. But Pittsburgh didn’t really have a good plan to integrate him. It got to the point that The Athletic called him a decoy after two weeks, noting that he was mostly running vertical clear-out routes. Pittsburgh played on Thursday Night Football and Pickens had a chance to introduce himself to the nation via highlight reel:
What was THE Moment of Week 3? Hello, George Pickens.
— NFL (@NFL) September 28, 2022
When will we see this on @NFLALLDAY? 🤔 #ALLDAYMoment pic.twitter.com/TAvet6kWFe
He increased his rate of targets in Week 3, finishing first on the Steelers in percentage of targeted air yards at 40.6% -- no wait, sorry, that was Diontae Johnson. Pickens was at 25.8%, a number that puts him solidly in the second banana status and well above Chase Claypool. However, Week 4 came and Pickens led the team in targeted air yards at 42.5%, a top-13 figure on the week. Meanwhile, Johnson disappeared. Pickens ran more routes over the middle of the field:
Steelers mixed up George Pickens' routes much more today. Had previously had extreme rate of straight downfield routes.
— Seth Walder (@SethWalder) October 3, 2022
Go routes
W1-3: 17%
W4: 4%
Deep fades
W1-3: 23%
W4: 13%
Image is his route map today, on all routes.
(ESPN / NGS) pic.twitter.com/aksgsJBFFA
A bet on Pickens, to me, is ultimately a bet against Claypool. Claypool was supposed to be the No. 2 receiver for the Steelers, and I don’t say this to denigrate the talent but it has not come together. Claypool has zero 40-yard receiving games this year and has only been bailed out slightly by rushing yardage in Week 1. He finished the 2021 season with five of his final six games producing less than 55 receiving yards. In Pickens’ breakout game last week, Claypool had just two targets. The flashes of talent from Claypool’s rookie season still show up from time to time, but he has not delivered on his promise so far. While Johnson’s usage cratered in Week 4, the Steelers just gave him a large extension. I kind of doubt that he’s going to be entirely phased out of the passing game every week, right?
Let’s be honest about what we saw in Week 4: Pickens looked great.
George Pickens Week 4 pic.twitter.com/ad113y0HJs
— rivers mccown (alt) (@mccownclips) October 4, 2022
He was able to win back-shoulder balls at will, he was involved in RPO action, and he knows where to find holes in zone coverage. His catches were spectacular. He’s earned a bigger share of the pie.
But we’re also talking about a bigger slice from a pie that does not look functionally great. The Steelers have not had a game all season with more than 205 net passing yards. So a bet on Pickens is also a bet on...
Pickett-to-Pickens
When Kenny Pickett came on at halftime for the Steelers, he ended up throwing 14 passes. Five of them targeted Pickens.
Does this functionally mean something to you? A shift in the targets? But what if I told you that Pickens already had 21.8% of Pittsburgh’s targets against the Browns in Week 3? The shift, to me, already came. Getting Pickens more involved over the middle -- getting him out of a route tree that wasn’t helping the offense -- matters. Those are better targets for the team and for Pickens. But I don’t think that Pickett is going to mind-meld with Pickens to the point where he gets 42.5% of the air yards on a team that has Diontae Johnson. I would buy that the comfort level mattered in the rookie’s first start, with no first-team practice reps all week. Yet ... they were already involving Pickens over the middle before Pickett took the field.
What would worry me the most right now as I prep FAAB bids for Pickens is the state of the offense and the fact that because of a hard schedule, you might have Pickens and not really be able to start him any time soon. The Bills have notably limited their opposing quarterbacks to sub-Justin Fields-level production this year and just humbled Lamar Jackson‘s stat line. Are you going to start a player who by most rational projections will be No. 2 in targeted air yards for the team into that?
OK, OK, but that’s one week. How about in Week 6 against the Buccaneers? My priors on Pickett, to be clear, look like this: I think he’s got a good arm that can make NFL-level outside throws, but his pocket movement looked wildly unrefined in college and I didn’t see a lot of preseason video to suggest that he’d look otherwise this year. Did that get fixed? Let’s take a look:
it's not Kenny Pickett's fault the ball bounced the way it did but getting 15 yards of depth and throwing late to the flat under pressure is about as high risk, zero reward as it gets pic.twitter.com/prXB0z4jvj
— Derrik Klassen (@QBKlass) October 3, 2022
So yes, the Bucs got trounced by Mahomes. They were also the best fantasy scoring defense in the league before that game. Is a rookie with pocket movement issues behind a bad offensive line a good bet into that? Would you want to start Pickens against that? How about the Dolphins? Eagles? Saints? The Steelers are chucking Pickett into a set of games that has the potential to create downright bottom-tier passing football. And it’s not like the design of the offense itself is in any way drawing the eyes of the NFL’s tape connoisseurs -- this is a team that doesn’t work jet motion, can’t create any open space for Najee Harris, and relies heavily on the talent of its receivers. They’re not generating easy yards for Pickett (or Pickens, for that matter) on a regular basis.
All of that doesn’t mean that Pickens and Pickett can’t be fantasy-useful this season. It doesn’t even mean they can’t be fantasy-useful right away. There are paths to everything in any given week, and if Mike Tomlin is willing to let his guy get blown out and throw 50 passes, a lot can happen that matters for us. But when you stack up the amount that has to go right for Pickens to run well, it makes me a little gun-shy to blow the FAAB on him if he is available in your league. I think there’s a real chance that in two or three weeks he will be available for free.
That’s got nothing to do with his talent. Like I said, he looks excellent. But fantasy football has always been about far more than that, and the forces pushing against Pickens are strong enough that I think this will get a little messy in the near future.
