Pittsburgh Steelers rookie wide receiver George Pickens seemingly made the impossible look easy on a weekly basis last season, routinely hauling in 50-50 balls like he was playing a routine game of catch with quarterback Kenny Pickett. If you thought Pickens caught more contested balls than the average receiver, you’d be right. Pickens ranked second in the NFL in Catch Rate Over Expected, or CROE, a stat that “measures the difficulty of completion using a number of factors, including separation from nearest defender, depth of target and speed,” per NFL.com and Next Gen Stats.
“Pickens caught 61.9 percent of his 84 targets in 2022, exceeding expectation at a rate of nearly 11 percent.