Have you ever had work equipment that never seems to function properly, causing you to compensate at your job daily?

Steelers receiver George Pickens may have related to that feeling over the first 40 games of an NFL career that began in 2022–or months after quarterback Ben Roethlisberger’s had ended.

Pickens’s clock as a professional football player began running with Mitch Trubisky throwing passes his way. It also started with offensive coordinator Matt Canada “scheming” up ways for him to get open. Trubisky ultimately gave way to Kenny Pickett during a promising rookie season that saw Pickens catch 52 passes for 801 yards and four touchdowns; not bad considering the quarterback play and “scheming” were pretty horrid. However, you did see some cracks in Pickens’s character at various points during the 2022 campaign, namely, his insistence that someone “Throw me the bleeping ball!” in a game at Atlanta.

Pickens spent his 2023 season catching passes from Pickett and then Trubisky before Mason Rudolph stepped in and finished the 17-game roller coaster ride with a surprising run to the playoffs. The second-year stud of a receiver out of Georgia had an even better season, catching 63 passes for 1,140 yards and five touchdowns. Yet, despite a sophomore campaign that pointed to a promising future, those red flags you heard about in the days before and after Pittsburgh made him a second-round pick in the 2022 NFL Draft grew brighter. He was seen sulking on the bench right after Diontae Johnson caught his first touchdown in ages during a game against the Titans on Thursday Night Football. He failed to block a defender downfield in an embarrassing loss against the Colts on a Saturday afternoon in December. When asked why he didn’t pick up a block on a play that may have sprung running back Jaylen Warren for a touchdown, he said he didn’t want to get injured.

Pickens was often the subject of talk radio last season and during the offseason. The talking heads and fans said he was a powder keg just waiting to explode. Should the Steelers trade him like they did Johnson? Should they include him in a deal to acquire Brandon Aiyuk, even though the whole point was to add to the receiver room and not just break even?

You heard similar things over the first six games of the 2024 regular season, even with a new quarterback in Justin Fields and a new offensive coordinator in Arthur Smith. Pickens sometimes appeared to give minimal effort on plays which he wasn’t the primary target. As for blocking on running plays? He occasionally seemed disinterested in doing any of that.

Immature. Selfish. A diva. The next Antonio Brown. Or at least the next Chase Claypool. “Yes or no, George Pickens will be with the Steelers in 2025?” That was a cliched question often posed to beat writers during radio segments. The answer was “no” just as much as it was “yes.”

A funny thing happened on the way to Pickens’s 2024 self-destruction: Russell Wilson was named the starting quarterback for the game against the Jets on October 20, and you haven’t heard a negative thing about the young receiver since.

Radio hosts aren’t using entire segments to discuss  Pickens’s selfishness or diva quotient. They didn’t spend the days before the recent NFL trade deadline talking about getting rid of him. Instead, they wondered if the Steelers would get him some help in the form of a legit number two wideout.

Perhaps it’s because Wilson is the first “professional” quarterback Pickens has played with during his two-plus years in the NFL. Maybe it’s because he caught 26 passes for 363 yards over his first six games of the season, but he’s reeled in nine passes for 185 yards and a touchdown over the past two. Pickens isn’t being targeted at a greater rate than when Fields was his quarterback, but he certainly has been more explosive; after averaging just under 14 yards per catch with Fields, Pickens is averaging 20.5 yards per reception with Wilson.

With Fields as his general, Pickens was on pace to catch 73 passes for 1,028 yards. He’s now on pace for 74 catches and 1,164 yards. If you took Pickens’s production over the past two games with Wilson and averaged it out over a full season, he’d have 76 receptions for 1,572 yards and 8 touchdowns.

Pickens had two touchdowns called back in the Steelers’ 26-18 win over the Giants on October 28–one for a facemask penalty and one when he could only get the same foot down twice–yet, he didn’t seem frustrated during or after the game.

Pickens has been quiet when it comes to making negative headlines.

I guess Pickens is no different than anyone else; he becomes a much happier co-worker when you give him the tools that make his job easier.