Steelers' big win over the Browns just served as massive wake-up call for George Pickens
"They will tolerate you until they can replace you." An adage as old as the NFL, the Pittsburgh Steelers missed George Pickens after his surprise inactivity in the early going of the Cleveland Browns game. But in the end, they reigned victorious and proved that the Steelers' way of winning, doesn't have to include a […]
"They will tolerate you until they can replace you."
An adage as old as the NFL, the Pittsburgh Steelers missed George Pickens after his surprise inactivity in the early going of the Cleveland Browns game.
But in the end, they reigned victorious and proved that the Steelers' way of winning, doesn't have to include a star WR:
Steelers Win Without George Pickens
"GP, [George Pickens] was listed as questionable [but] we didn't feel like he was going to be able to play the type of number of snaps that we thought would be worth putting him in a uniform," said Tomlin after Sunday's win. "To be quite honest with you, we didn't want a small problem to become a big problem, and so we put a helmet on Scotty Miller. And as you can see, most of the time when you put the helmets on the healthy guys, man, they take care of the rest. Scott, he made some plays for us, and thankful for that. That's another example of the team component of this game…
"…Man, you can waste a lot of time worried about the guys that are unavailable to you. We choose to focus our energies on the guys that are available to us, their preparedness and then ultimately their play. Tip of the cap, Scotty Miller, man stepping up and making some big plays for us."
Pickens might have missed the game due to a hamstring injury, but following yet another set of fines from the NFL on Saturday, and a long line of antics, some have hypothesized that Pickens may have actually been benched, when analyzing the fact that he seemingly missed the game out of nowhere:
But as Coach Tomlin said, Pickens' absence along with the big catches from Scotty Miller, Van Jefferson, and Mike Williams proves that the team is above any one player. Pittsburgh wants to play complimentary football to begin with, so feeding a star WR isn't a part of their recipe when game planning.
And maybe Pickens needed to miss Sunday's game. Hamstring or not, watching his team go out and beat a squad they aren't even three weeks removed from losing to while he watches might be the wakeup call that makes him realize the Steelers can win without him.
