What do you do with a 22-year-old acting like a child when he doesn’t get his way? Well, Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin has some experience with that, and we’ll see how he proceeds.
There’s no need to rehash the rollercoaster drama that was the Antonio Brown era. We all know what happened there. Outsiders saw Brown as toxic to the locker room, and perhaps he was. But on the inside, his production outweighed his immaturity, so Tomlin and the Steelers dealt with him for as long as they could.
The cameras showed Diontae Johnson on the sideline after his relief-sigh touchdown, catching Pickens slouched down on the bench in solitude.
The Athletic’s Mark Kaboly observed that the second-year receiver was the first one out of the building after the Steelers win.
Fast forward three years and Chase Claypool’s antics surfaced. Nowhere near the extreme of his counterpart, but also something the Steelers made a decision wasn’t worth it. Claypool since leaving the Steelers has continued to show a lack of maturity and more importantly, a lack of production that is the great equalizer when it comes to these sorts of decisions.
There is no denying just how talented Pickens is. But he is just 22 years old and came into the league with maturity concerns. Creating unnecessary distractions can only hurt the team. The best thing Pickens can do is keep his head down, focus on his team and work on getting better. No one should ever be pouting about not getting the football much less 25 games into your NFL career.
