This offseason is moving way too fast. Everyone should still be basking in the Philadelphia Eagles' dismantling of the Chiefs in the Super Bowl. Instead, it’s a bunch of garbage about some new wide receiver in Dallas.
Cool, the Steelers traded George Pickens to the Cowboys. Will it matter? No. Will people hype a CeeDee Lamb and Pickens wide receiver duo for the next four months? Yes. Are they better than A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith? Absolutely not. Will dinguses try to tell you that they are? Insufferably, yes.
It’s going to be a long summer of George Pickens-led delusion
On a football level, Pickens going to Dallas is bad, but not terrible. He’s one of the better deep threats in the NFL, but he is just as likely to lose a game from a penalty as he is to make a super sick catch. Also, if Mike Tomlin, the head coach who corralled lunatic receivers like Antonio Brown and JuJu Smith-Schuster, cuts ties, that means he’s a problem.
On a societal level, this is a code-red, smash the panic button, launch the nukes, buy Milk of the Poppy and chug it. Right now, there are some Cowboys fans and aggregators who are hyping up the trade and making it seem like CeeDee Lamb and George Pickens are a top-three wide receiver duo. That’s only going to get worse once OTAs start in a couple of weeks, and then it’ll get cranked up to 11 during training camp later in the summer.
They are not a top-three duo. Not even close. I ranked the top five a couple of months ago, and the Cowboys’ hodgepodge wide receiver room is not better than the Buccaneers’, the Lions’, the Vikings’, or the Eagles’.
Now, to be unnecessarily fair to them, that duo is (potentially) much better now, and they did go up in the wide receiver room rankings in the NFC East.
4. New York Giants
Is Malik Nabers any good? Maybe? Probably? Who knows? He didn’t have a quarterback last year, and this year he has three. He’s not going to have any consistency at quarterback until it’s time for the Giants to decide whether or not they want to exercise his fifth-year option.
None of that matters. The thing about the New York Giants is that they sold their souls for two Super Bowls in 2007 and 2011. Now they are cursed, and the universe only allows them to have one offensive weapon at a time.
Right now, their wide receiver room is Nabers at WR1, and then Wan’dale Robinson/Darius Slayton at WR7. It’s bad over there.
3. Washington Commanders
There is only one person in the world who gets to make fun of Terry McLaurin, and that one person is Quinyon Mitchell. He’s the Founder, Warden, and sole prison guard of "Quinyonamo Bay," and McLaurin is one of his prisoners.
I am not Quinyon Mitchell (no matter how much I want to be), and I remember what McLaurin has done to Eagles corners in the past. He’s really good. Hell, he’s a top-ten receiver in the NFL. Unfortunately for him, the other receiver in Washington is now Deebo Samuel.
The Deebo Samuel thing is funny because everyone who is associated with Washington thinks that he’s going to crush. Every single other person knows what Deebo Samuel is right now, and the Deebo Samuel that we know now is 29 years old, averages 44-ish yards per game, has a drop rate of 7.4% (the average is 4.7%, by the way), and is coming off of a year with 432 YAC (the lowest of his career and down almost 20% from 2023).
Samuel can be good, and he’ll probably make some flashy plays — but he’s not who he used to be, and we’ll see that way more often than not.
2. Dallas Cowboys
I think it’s fine to say that CeeDee Lamb is a really good receiver; he’s probably a top-ten receiver in the NFL.
The delicious problem that the Cowboys have had the past couple of years is that the other receivers on the field have been Jalen Tolbert, Brandin Cooks, and Noah Brown. None of those guys gives off even a whiff of danger, and they demand zero respect from defenses..
Even so, Lamb’s dropped four straight seasons with 1,000+ receiving yards, even though he’s seeing double coverage and the other team’s best cornerback. It’s objectively impressive.
Now there’s going to be another real NFL-level wide receiver on the field with him. The last time that happened was in 2021 when the Cowboys had Lamb and Amari Cooper. Now, that team was pretty lethal through the air, but they also had a future Super Bowl-winning offensive coordinator, Kellen Moore, running the operation.
Regardless, George Pickens does give the Cowboys a whole new element to their passing game. It’ll unfortunately be much better than what it has been lately. Fortunately, that "much better" is going to be widely inconsistent because, again, Pickens will either make a highlight catch, try to punch a cornerback straight through his entire helmet while the ball is in the air, or try to punch a cornerback straight through his entire helmet after the play is over.
The highs will be high… but the lows will be personal fouls, and the camera finding Cowboys fans in the crowd who are in utter disbelief that their new wide receiver, who is known for being unhinged, is unhinged. It’ll be delightful.
1. Philadelphia Eagles
The Eagles don’t just have the best wide receiver room in the NFC East, they have the best wide receiver room in the NFL. You already knew that though. It’s A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith. It’s the only wide receiver duo in the NFL consisting of two top-ten wide receivers in the NFL.
Brown is the rawest, purest, most dominant X-receiver in the league. He catches everything thrown at him, and he’s just about as close to impossible to tackle as you can get. Smith is right up there with his hands, and he uses his elite catch radius, route running, burst, and shiftiness to just not get touched.
We’re seeing the best wide receiver duo in the history of the franchise, which is wild because it's in the same five-year stretch where we also had to watch John Hightower, Jalen Reagor, and J.J. Arcega Whiteside. It’s unbelievable.