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.

Not only was the on-field effort a concern, but apparently Pickens has been showing up late consistently, according to Ray Fittipaldo.

“A source told the Post-Gazette Pickens has shown up late for work on multiple occasions this season,” Fittipaldo writes. “Antonio Brown was notorious for being late, but Tomlin never reduced his snap counts. From 2013 until 2018, his final season with the Steelers, Brown played anywhere from 91-96% of the snaps. One issue Brown never had was giving maximum effort when he was on the field.”

Hopefully everything gets smoothed over with Pickens and we don’t have any drama to worry about and report on. The Steelers play the Las Vegas Raiders this Sunday, and it’s a game that Pickens can use as a big bounce-back statement game, similar to his massive game against the Cincinnati Bengals in Week 16 last year.