The Path to a WR1 Fantasy Football Season: George Pickens

Editor’s Note: This profile is part of our annual Path to a Fantasy WR1 series. For our methodology and an outline of the process, make sure you read the 2024 Path to WR1 Series Primer.

From Antonio Brown to Hines Ward, the Pittsburgh Steelers have a history of producing stud wideouts. Juju Smith-Schuster posted over 1,400 receiving yards with the Black and Gold. Their most recent alpha wideout, Diontae Johnson landed in Carolina this offseason, priming George Pickens to step up as the WR1 in Pittsburgh in 2024. Will that be enough to make him a WR1 in fantasy football? Let’s dive in.

Find out the full statistical projections for the Footballers Consensus WR1s in the Ultimate Draft Kit.

2023 Season Recap

After a modest rookie campaign in 2022, Pickens broke out for 1,140 receiving yards in 2023. He finished as the WR26 overall, but it was a bumpy ride for fantasy managers. He only had three weeks finishing as a top-24 fantasy wideout, while he finished outside of the top 36 eleven times. It earned him a D in the Ballers’ consistency rating. Part of that inconsistency can be blamed on playing in Matt Canada’s offense with Kenny Pickett at quarterback for the first 13 weeks of the season.

Despite the erratic week-to-week performances, Pickens compiled strong season-long stats. He improved on his rookie numbers in nearly every receiving metric, as shown in the table below.

If you want even more insight on Pickens’ 2023 campaign and have 12 minutes to spare, Borg compiled his season of targets into a single video.

George Pickens Targets? GP Targets, It is!

12 min of all GP from 2023 pic.twitter.com/5742Cjobzy

— Kyle Borgognoni (@kyle_borg) June 21, 2024

The Path for 2024

Pittsburgh overhauled their offense this offseason. Not only did Diontae Johnson leave, Kenny Pickett and Mason Rudolph were replaced with Russell Wilson and Justin Fields. Off the field, the Steelers brought in Arthur Smith to coordinate the offense after Matt Canada’s system and playcalling was deemed poor enough to get him fired midway through last season. Could this revamped offense lead to a dominant fantasy season from Pickens? Let’s explore further.

Target Share

Targets are the top driver of fantasy production, and plenty will be available for Pickens. The 106 he earned last year accounted for a respectable 21.9% target share, with Diontae Johnson seeing a 23.5% target share himself. When Johnson missed Weeks 2-5 with a hamstring injury, Pickens volume jumped to 8.3 targets/game, which equates to a 17-game pace of 140.3 targets. It’s a small sample size, but it indicates the type of volume Pickens could see as the top option in the Pittsburgh passing game.

Fantasy managers may shiver at the thought of drafting a receiver in an offense led by Arthur Smith, but despite his failures as a head coach, Smith was a proven play-caller in Tennessee. In 2020, his Titans offense featured A.J. Brown getting a 26% target share and finishing as the WR11 in just 15 games played. Even in Atlanta, he made Drake London a target hog, funneling him 26% of the targets over the past two seasons. With no target competition to speak of on Pittsburgh’s 2024 roster, it’s easy to project a target share north of 25% for Pickens this season.

Receptions & Catch Rate

Pickens has averaged 57.5 receptions/season over his first two years in the NFL with a 61% catch rate. That’s less than ideal, as only two of the top-12 fantasy WRs had a lower catch percentage last season. One was Mike Evans (58.1%) who got there on the back of his league-high 13 receiving touchdowns. The other was Davante Adams (58.9%) who was second in the league with 175 targets. 

It’s unreasonable to project that many touchdowns or targets for Pickens, but there is reason to be optimistic about his catch rate increasing. Reports from Pittsburgh suggest that he’ll be playing more out of the slot, where he can get more advantageous matchups and easier completions. He’s unlikely to become a full-time slot receiver, but there is plenty of room to improve from his 16.% slot rate last season, which ranked 33rd out of 36 receivers with at least 100 targets. 

Another reason to believe that Pickens’ catch rate should rise is the departure of Kenny Pickett. Last year Pickett ranked 28th in the NFL, completing just 62.0% of his passes. He had the fourth-highest bad throw rate at 18.4%. Russell Wilson, the favorite to win the starting QB job for the Steelers, had a 66.4% completion rating and a bad throw rate of just 13.2%, the fourth lowest in the league. Say what you will about Wilson, but he is an upgrade over Pickett.

Yards & aDOT

This is where Pickens shined in 2023. His league-high 18.1 yards/rec turned his 63 catches into a whopping 1,140 yards. That is an unsustainably high number, but he also averaged 15.4 yards/rec as a rookie and 15.0 yards/rec in his three years in college at Georgia. Big plays are part of his profile.

Pickens compiled his receiving yards in multiple ways. Among the 36 receivers with 100 targets last season, he ranked eighth in average depth of target (aDOT) at 13.6 yards and fifth in yards after catch/rec at 6.1 yards. He was the only receiver with both an aDOT above 13 yards and over 6.0 YAC/rec in the league.

Touchdowns

Touchdowns are the quickest way to rack up fantasy points, and also one of the more difficult stats to project. Pickens hasn’t been a touchdown machine through his first two seasons, finding the end zone four times as a rookie and five times last season. Yet again, let’s look at the arrival of Russell Wilson with some optimism. What could go wrong?

Jokes aside, Wilson has supported double-digit touchdown receivers in the past. That list includes Doug Baldwin, Tyler Lockett, DK Metcalf (twice), and most recently, Courtland Sutton. We’ve seen Pickens’ big play ability on display and at 6’3” he has the size and athleticism to go up and get the ball in the end zone. As the clear number one option in Pittsburgh, a double-digit touchdown season is in the realm of possibilities. 

Conclusion

There’s no question that George Pickens is one of the most athletically talented wide receivers in the NFL. Unfortunately, he’s been stuck in a broken offense with a bust of a quarterback for most of his first two seasons. The putrid offensive environments have only allowed him to scratch the surface of his potential.

The probability of him breaking into the WR1 ranks of fantasy football in 2024 weighs heavily on the capacity of Arthur Smith to design an effective offense and the ability of Russell Wilson to execute it. Those two names may make fantasy managers turn and run, but they have been successful with previous teams. Those previous teams included run-heavy offenses that still produced elite fantasy receivers. (See A.J. Brown and DK Metcalf). Pickens is in line for the WR1 job in Pittsburgh, and if the offense clicks, there is a path for him to be a WR1 in fantasy football.