The Dallas Cowboys swung a trade for the Pittsburgh Steelers’ top receiver from 2024.
The Dallas Cowboys landed Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver George Pickens
in a trade on Wednesday after an offseason-long search for another wideout.
Dallas needed another high-caliber receiver to pair with their star wideout CeeDee Lamb. As part of the trade, the Cowboys gave up a 2026 third-round draft pick plus a 2027 fifth-round pick, and the Steelers got a 2027 sixth-round pick.
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones previously talked about looking at
“substantive trades” ahead of the draft, but out of the team’s nine draft picks, none were wide receivers.
Dallas picked No. 12 in the first round, and the top wideout on the board, Tetairoa McMillan, had already been taken by the Carolina Panthers at No. 8. The Cowboys also skipped on other notable prospects in the first two rounds: Emeka Egbuka, Matthew Golden, Jayden Higgins, and Luther Burden III.
That said, the Cowboys now have a new young wideout in Pickens, 24, who could be around a while to work with Lamb. Pickens has 174 receptions for 2,841 yards and 12 touchdowns in his three-year tenure with the Steelers.
During that time, Pickens played with five different starting quarterbacks in Pittsburgh, which has been a revolving door since Ben Roethlisberger’s retirement in January 2022. Pickens will most likely play with just one starting quarterback in Dallas, Dak Prescott, for the foreseeable future. Prescott will enter his 10th season amid a four-year,
$240 million contract.
Pittsburgh had counted on Pickens as the team’s top wide receiver in recent years, but the Steelers added two-time Pro Bowler DK Metcalf this offseason via a trade. Pickens has at least 52 catches, 801 yards, and three touchdowns in every year of his career.
The Steelers drafted Pickens with a second-round pick out of Georgia. He previously helped the Bulldogs win a national title in 2021 and finished his college career with 90 catches for
1,347 yards and 14 touchdowns in 26 games played.
Pickens has remained mostly durable throughout his NFL career, but he had some significant injuries in college. He missed two games with a shoulder injury in 2020 against Alabama and tore his ACL in March 2021 at spring practice, but he returned late in the national championship season. In his NFL career, Pickens has missed only three games with a hamstring strain in 2024.
Pickens had a four-year,
$6.75 million contract with the Steelers. He will have one year left on that deal in 2025 with the Cowboys. How much Pickens could command remains to be seen, but Spotrac has his annual asking price at
$25.3 million.
Dallas is projected to have
$21.52 million in salary cap space for 2021, and the Cowboys still have Micah Parsons to consider. The star defensive end received a
$24 million fifth-year option, but his free agent market value is even higher at
$36.3 million annually.
For now, the Cowboys have a dynamic young tandem at wideout, and Lamb, 26, expressed excitement over a change before the Pickens trade. On Tuesday night, Lamb
posted a Simpsons character waving in a GIF on X.com, which went viral with more than four million views.
Last season, Lamb had 101 catches for
1,194 yards and six touchdowns, but the Cowboys had little else. Wide receiver Jalen Tolbert had 49 receptions for 610 yards and seven touchdowns, and tight end Jake Ferguson had 59 catches for 494 yards.
With Pickens gone, Pittsburgh now has a dropoff in talent at wideout. After Metcalf, the Steelers don’t have a returning wideout with more than 36 catches,
548 yards, and four touchdowns. That’s Calvin Austin III, who had tallied those numbers in his third season.
Otherwise, the Steelers also notably have Robert Woods, whose play has declined amid injuries in recent years. Woods previously tallied more than
525 yards in every year of his career before 2023, and he last had a 1,000-yard season in 2019.
