George Pickens trade could unlock Cowboys’ offense — and fantasy football upside for many

Sports

add

The Dallas Cowboys had an unserious wide receiver depth chart after elite alpha CeeDee Lamb at the beginning of the month. It was widely assumed they would address the WR2 spot in the NFL Draft but they opted to fill other needs and came out of April with Jalen Tolbert and Jonathan Mingo (theoretically) sitting behind Lamb.

That changed Wednesday morning when the Cowboys struck a trade with the Pittsburgh Steelers for wide receiver George Pickens. The Cowboys sent a third-round pick back to Pittsburgh and swapped Day 3 picks in the 2027 NFL Draft.

Why the Steelers dealt Pickens

I think it’s most instructive to examine this trade from the Steelers’ angle first, because it helps inform what Dallas is getting in Pickens. A Pickens trade has been on my radar since the end of last season, and I was willing to go on record predicting it would happen at some point this offseason after speaking with multiple people at the NFL Scouting Combine in February. If there was any doubt, the fact that the organization chose to trade for another team’s starting X-receiver in DK Metcalf and give him an extension north of $30 million should have removed it. It’s not shocking in the least that Pickens has been dealt, as my understanding of the situation is that there was a near 0% chance the Steelers were interested in offering him a second contract. What is a little surprising is that they didn’t do it before the draft this year, but again, that’s instructive of where this relationship was.

Advertisement

[Join or create a Yahoo Fantasy Football league for the 2025 NFL season]

It’s pretty telling that Pittsburgh, which is theoretically in the shortest of short-term windows with a 41-year-old Aaron Rodgers likely their starting quarterback this season, was willing to take 2026 draft picks for George Pickens to just not be on their team in 2025.

Here’s why this stings: It was fairly obvious watching the film last season that Pickens was playing the best football of his career in the first month of last season.

He was obliterating man coverage and winning on more than just his typical diet of vertical routes. Pickens’ release work off the line was vastly improved and he was getting consistent separation on slants, even when he didn’t get the football. I was so impressed with his play.

Advertisement

It looked like all systems go but things changed almost immediately after that video above. In Week 5, ironically against the Cowboys, he played just 58.6% of the offensive snaps and came under fire for his effort and focus, especially when plays were designed to go his way. He was visibly jogging through routes and wasn’t engaged; that film was brutal. Pickens enjoyed a strong stretch of games with Russell Wilson under center but then missed three games with an injury in December. He came back to play the final two games of the regular season but was once again critiqued for his effort in a Christmas Day loss to the Chiefs and was held catchless against the Bengals with multiple drops and miscues in contested situations in their Week 18 loss to Cincinnati. He had one catch for eight yards and an offensive pass interference penalty in the first half of a blowout wild-card loss in Baltimore.

Feel like you just rode a roller coaster of highs and lows? That’s been the Pickens experience for three years in Pittsburgh. It was a ride ownership, the front office, and Mike Tomlin were ready to exit. None of these issues caught Pittsburgh by surprise — there’s a reason that a player with his talent was available in Round 2 back in 2022 — their tolerance for the experience had just run its course.

Why the Cowboys took a chance on Pickens

So now we come to Dallas’ decision to take on Pickens and everything that comes with it; all the highs and all the lows. It’s essential to understand the risk they’re taking on here when you’re analyzing this trade and look beyond his season-end stats or obsessing about how he’s played with terrible quarterbacks in miserable offenses. And you need to do it even if you like the trade, which I do.

Advertisement

The Cowboys didn’t just have a glaring need for someone with “WR” next to their name; their specific deficiencies required someone with George Pickens’ exact skill set.

Dallas has done an excellent job of weaponizing CeeDee Lamb by moving him around the formation. Lamb leads all wide receivers with 43 yards per game out of the slot over the last two seasons. He’s both a big-play threat and a first-down machine as an interior receiver. Lamb is good enough to win from any alignment but his connection with Dak Prescott and value to the offense is maximized when lined up off the line or inside.

What the Cowboys have missed during this period is a true X-receiver to line up outside of Lamb and threaten defenses down the field and in man coverage. Pickens is a carved from stone, classic X-receiver. He’s both a premier ball-winner and at his best, is dangerous against man coverage. Even while suffering through his own lapses and playing with poor quarterbacks, he’s fourth among all wide receivers in yards per route vs. man coverage over the last two seasons combined. His 3.16 figure trails only Nico Collins, Lamb and A.J. Brown. Let’s not get carried away, he doesn’t have the complete skill-set of those elite players but in the specific vertical X-receiver portion of the gig, he’s excellent when he’s engaged.

Advertisement

At the very least, Pickens brings Prescott what he’s missed since Michael Gallup tore his ACL. Pickens separates well on downfield and outside-breaking routes, particularly against press coverage, and can be a ball-winner on stop routes.

That alone is worth the gamble of trading a third-rounder for a player on an expiring contract, considering Dallas’ screaming needs for this exact type of wide receiver and its goals for the season. The fact that he was at one point playing like the actualized version of the underneath and intermediate separator that he showed back as a prospect only makes it more tantalizing.

The Pickens trade could be the missing ingredient this Cowboys’ passing game needed and he could ball out in a contract year for a team that wants to get its offense rolling under new head coach Brian Schottenheimer. We could be looking at the best season of his career now that he’s tethered to, by far, the best passer of his NFL career. Pickens could also fall back into the same old bad habits and the Cowboys could find themselves regretting sending away a Day 2 draft pick for a one-year wide receiver rental who never quiet got with the program. There is variance with this move but I don’t fault the Cowboys one bit for leaning into it.

Advertisement

Either way, they’ll at least be interesting and that’s not something you could say about this team, and certainly the offensive product, over the last 12 months.

If DK Metcalf and George Pickens were going to share a field, I wasn’t too keen on drafting either one of them in fantasy this season. Now that we know they both won’t be a member of the Pittsburgh offense, I’m at least a bit more interested.

The Steelers were 28th in neutral pass rate when Russell Wilson was under center last season. That’s familiar territory for an Arthur Smith offense and it’s where I’ll project them no matter who is under center. One wide receiver needs to dominate the target share in order to be an every-week starter in an attack like this and now Metcalf is poised to do so. He also fits the X-receiver route tree of this offense extremely well, which prioritizes in-breakers off play-action.

Metcalf’s scheme fit and locked-in high target share is enough to get me to bump him back inside my top-24 wide receivers, at least, for this season. That is assuming whatever is left of Rodgers is playing for this team. If it’s Mason Rudolph, forget about it.

Advertisement

Elsewhere in Pittsburgh, this just reaffirms their commitment to a run-first operation. I can’t get too much higher on rookie running back Kaleb Johnson as a perfect scheme-fit and Year 1 impact runner but it doesn’t hurt.

Moving to George Pickens, he is a little trickier to rank among wide receivers but this is a win for him in redraft. He gets a quarterback upgrade no matter how Pittsburgh’s situation sorts out and he’s moving to a pass-leaning team that needs his skill set. Stock up no matter how you slice it.

To go back to the Gallup example, he had a 12.8 fantasy points per game season in 2019 as the clear No. 2 receiver playing X across from a move-around specialist in Amari Cooper while catching passes from Dak Prescott. That would place him around WR16 to 18 last season and it’s likely a high mark for Pickens. But considering his talent and this environment, it’s at least in the range of outcomes for Pickens. Given his likely deployment as the vertical X-receiver, I expect the journey to get to whatever the end-of-season statline is for Pickens to be volatile. I’ll likely slot him just outside the top-30 receivers in my rankings who have a similar combustible weekly profile, while recognizing that his full-season floor — considering all the factors we went over above — is more tenuous than most.

Advertisement

This move does make me more interested in the Cowboys offense as an overall ecosystem. Whatever you think of Pickens, he’s a massive upgrade over their prior perimeter options. I really wish their was a clear-cut starting running back to target on this depth chart but you can take late-round dart throws at Jaydon Blue unless they trade for another veteran at that spot.

Dak Prescott’s fantasy ceiling is a bit higher than his current QB17 consensus ranking, via FantasyPros. While CeeDee Lamb might not have 190 targets in his range of outcomes with Pickens in fold, it doesn’t back me off ranking him as a top-three wide receiver or top-five overall fantasy player this season. More touchdowns is good for every member of this offense, including CeeDee Lamb, and George Pickens’ addition certainly increases their chances to score touchdowns.

This news was originally published on this post .

Share on

email

Previous

trending_flat

2025 Fantasy Football Sleepers 1.0 from Heath Cummings: Josh Downs, Brock Purdy, Tank Bigsby and more

Sports

Next

trending_flat

Celtics vs. Knicks prediction, odds, schedule, game times: Game 2 best bet as New York tries to go up 2-0

Sports