The Pittsburgh Steelers lost their second straight game in Week 5, losing 20-17 to the Dallas Cowboys. The bigger takeaway from the game, though, was the usage of George Pickens - or lack thereof.
Pickens was on the field for just 34 snaps. Van Jefferson and Calvin Austin both had considerably more. Pickens was also notably taking plays off, jogging and half-running a lot of routes on plays in which he wasn’t going to get the ball. Head coach Mike Tomlin attributed the lack of snaps to “snap management” postgame, but did note that Pickens’ lack of effort played a factor in the snap management when asked about it by Chris Carter of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.