The Dallas Cowboys made a big splash Wednesday morning and agreed to a trade with wide receiver George Pickens. They send the Pittsburgh Steelers a 2026 third round pick and a 2027 fifth pick and a 2027 sixth pick for the Pickens.
The Cowboys were looking for a legal WR2 along with Cede Deeram and Pickens Should Increase their attacks. But is Pickens definitely Dallas’ answer? And has Pittsburgh returned enough in return?
Let’s evaluate both sides. Who actually won the deal? I evaluate transactions based on multiple factors, including on the field impact, overall value on each side, impact on salary caps, and context of the short-term and long-term QB outlook for each team.
Grading Piken to Dallas
After fully handing over the wide receiver position in this year’s draft, the Cowboys finally complemented Ram by completing their second receiver. Pickens is also excellent for lambs. He is an external vertical receiver, allowing the lamb to maintain a heavy dose of slot alignment in Cowboys attacks. The Pickens have run, deep faded 19% of the time last season, making it the 10th highest rate among receivers who run at least 300 routes. He managed 900 yards in 14 games in 2024 and hit 1,140 receiving yards in 2023. And he recorded a strong 2.2 yards per route for both years.
According to ESPN’s Player Tracking Base Receiver scorePickens shows his ability to be open since his rookie season. He scored an open score of 48 in 2022, but has risen to 70 and 68 over the past two years. However, his catch score went from his rookie year high to 72 in 2023, and then 40 last season. This looks like a player’s profile where you can see aggressive regression. This is because the ability of receivers to open is more stable year by year than the ability to catch on expectations.
So on paper, this move means a lot to the cowboy. Although 2024 didn’t get poor due to this team, the roster has the same core as what went 12-5 in 2023 (though the coaches are different). Giving up Pickens’ picks for more than three rounds of one year makes sense given how much less the Cowboys (less than $3.4 million) cost him than he had been in the open market.
However, this movement is not only done on paper. The majority of the reason Pickens is available is that the Steelers seem to have had enough of him. After the Pickens had two sportsman-like penalties against the Bengals last season, Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said, “He’s got a target on his back because he’s George. He understands that. But he has to grow. He has to hurry up.” Then, after the season, Tomlin said, “There’s certainly certainly room for growth there.” Earlier in the season, Tomlin had dismissed concerns at the time, but there were also questions about Pickens’ efforts.
The risk here is reduced by a year’s commitment, and if I were a Cowboys, I would like to keep it that way. They should have him play the season and perhaps let him walk the next offseason in exchange for potential compensatory picks. If Dallas signed an extension to the Pickens before the 2025 season, I will reduce that performance significantly here.
For the Steelers, this is a good compensation. The league was widely known that they wanted to move ahead of the Pickens, but they still got back their second day pick.
Pittsburgh already acquired a Pickens replacement at DK Metcalf earlier this offseason. The two wideouts could have played together, but there is obvious overlap in style, and it appears that the Metcalf acquisition will lose Piken. But the Steelers are once again having receiver issues. Behind Metcalf on the depth chart is Calvin Austin III, Robert Woods and Roman Wilson.
The final piece of the puzzle is what he has to do with Aaron Rodgers. Without a second receiver next to Metcalf, Pittsburgh is more than that because he is an immediate candidate. That makes Rogers a bit more difficult to justify, even when Steelers’ options in QB are very limited in drafting the rearview mirror. Maybe Kirk Cousins could go on a different route?
Cowboys’ results: B-
