WR Fallout From the George Pickens Trade

George Pickens:

Speaking of George Pickens, the move to Dallas is a relative upgrade: he moves from an offense directed by Arthur Smith (14th percentile in his career in pass play frequency) to one conducted by Schottenheimer (43rd percentile in his career in pass play frequency). That being said, this still isn’t going to be a pass-first offense, and Pickens isn’t exactly a target-earning WR: he’s posted target rates of 14%, 19%, and 23% in the first three years of his career on a per-route basis. Pickens only broke the 20% threshold in 2024 once Diontae Johnson - a proven target earner - left the picture for the Steelers, and now he’s teamed up with one of the league’s top target earners in Ceedee Lamb (28% targets per route run each of the past two seasons). Assuming the overall available target pool shrinks with Schottenheimer making a concerted effort to run the ball more, the situation for Pickens could mirror closely what we saw from him in Pittsburgh. It’s a lateral move.

Pickens has yet to eclipse 110 targets in a season in his career, but has over 100 (103 and 106) in his past two seasons. Does Dallas look like an offense that’s going to allow him to top those numbers? His catch rate could improve, and that could bring up his bottom line, but Pickens looks the most like a WR3 - much more so than a WR2.

CeeDee Lamb:

Pickens being added isn’t going to limit Lamb as much as the expected change in offensive philosophy will. Lamb was able to post his 181-135-1749-12 line in 2023 with Jake Ferguson eclipsing 100 targets and Brandin Cooks having 81 targets of his own. He’s no stranger to dominating a target share, and Pickens isn’t substantial enough target competition to give up on Lamb’s ability to continue to shine. Lamb’s ceiling is lower this season by default, not as a direct result of the Pickens trade. Continue to draft him in the 1st round with confidence.

D.K. Metcalf

As we can see, D.K. Metcalf is a target-earning WR; not necessarily elite, but he is more than capable of holding his own when the competition around him is limited. With just one other competing receiver in Tyler Lockett, Metcalf was able to post two seasons with a 27% target share - more than enough to be a fantasy WR1. Ultimately, he finished as the overall WR14 and WR16 in those two seasons, and finished as the overall WR7 in 2020 despite having just a 24% target share.

Once JSN came around in 2023, though, Metcalf struggled to maintain his grip on the target distribution – he posted 23 and 22% target shares, with target rates of just 21 and 20%. That was with Lockett and JSN, so we can cut him some slack. The good news for Metcalf: there’s almost nobody else competing for targets with him at this point in Pittsburgh’s offense, with Pickens out the door. TE Pat Freiermuth just had a career year where he caught 65 passes on 78 targets, so his target-earning ceiling likely isn’t much higher. We could realistically see that target share number jump back into the mid-high 20%s, possibly even crossing the 30% threshold if the Steelers don’t add anyone before the start of the season.

Metcalf’s slice of the pie in terms of the target distribution should be large, but with Arthur Smith as the playcaller in Pittsburgh, the pie that he’s getting a slice of might be small to begin with. Smith has ranked bottom-8 in pass attempts in five of his six seasons calling plays, and no wide receiver has had more than 117 targets in a season in that span. Consider also that the Steelers' QB depth chart features only Mason Rudolph and rookie Will Howard, and it becomes another layer of uncertainty for Metcalf. He’s moving from an offense that was solid with plenty of target competition to an offense that, on paper, is much worse – but in Pittsburgh, he’ll be the clear alpha WR1. It’s a tradeoff that might help his weekly floor, but his overall upside on the season is probably low. Even the high-end of his range of outcomes looks like WR2, and that’s if best best-case scenario is exactly what unfolds.