Steelers insider exposes the truth regarding the relationship between George Pickens and veteran leaders in the locker room
George Pickens clearly wore out his welcome with the Pittsburgh Steelers. You don't move off a talent of his caliber prior to his rookie contract ending if there aren't major concerns, much of which have been documented over the course of the last week. But what hasn't been totally unveiled was how the locker room […]
George Pickens clearly wore out his welcome with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
You don't move off a talent of his caliber prior to his rookie contract ending if there aren't major concerns, much of which have been documented over the course of the last week.
But what hasn't been totally unveiled was how the locker room felt about the move, or if they had a hand in it.
Now we know…
Steelers vets we're getting tired of George Pickens
“I think it needed to be done, said Steelers reporter Mark Kaboly of The Pat McAfee Show. "I think it was getting really ugly behind the scenes there. And I think some of the players of veteran leadership weren’t too thrilled with George. I don’t know the timeline on that. So I think that pushed it to the edge…
"… If you're hearing Pickens’ antics that people are saying, imagine the stuff that you're not hearing. I think there's a lot of stuff that we still don't know. After all this went through, saying 'Oh geez, if you would've known this, the trade would have made a ton of sense.'”
Sources have told A to Z Sports that the presence of Pickens in the locker room created dysfunction within the building, given his routine actions and the demeanor in which Pickens carried himself.
That being said, a lot of people will tolerate a headache if he produces. Pickens consistently produced when on the field, and that often leads players to turn the other cheek. For players to say, "hey, he's gotta get out of here," that says a lot about how bad it actually was, and further points to Kaboly's point about everything we don't know.
If there was really a breaking point between Pickens and say Minkah, Watt or Cam Heyward, then the decision to move on makes a lot more sense than it originally did last week.
As much as you want to go all in and keep all your weapons for at least one more year with the last iteration of this generation of Steelers greats, if a player is as toxic as it seems Pickens was, moving off of the sour grape was probably best for all parties involved.
