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Reception Perception: The Show

RP Clips: Trying to Fix the Steelers Offense

Matt and James discuss the slow start out of the gate for the Steelers offense (even though they're 2-0) and why George Pickens is playing great football right now.

Whether it's the biggest stars in the league or new rookies bursting on the scene, you won't get better wideout information anywhere else. Along the way, they'll break down the biggest stories in the NFL and offer up a few big-picture fantasy football thoughts. Follow the guys on Twitter @JamesDKoh and @MattHarmon_BYB. Follow Reception Perception @RecepPerception. Download and Subscribe to the Reception Perception Show anywhere you get your podcasts. Watch segments of the show on YouTube at Matt Harmon!!

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Broadcast on:
19 Sep 2024
Audio Format:
other

Matt and James discuss the slow start out of the gate for the Steelers offense (even though they're 2-0) and why George Pickens is playing great football right now.


Whether it's the biggest stars in the league or new rookies bursting on the scene, you won't get better wideout information anywhere else. Along the way, they'll break down the biggest stories in the NFL and offer up a few big-picture fantasy football thoughts.

Follow the guys on Twitter @JamesDKoh and @MattHarmon_BYB. Follow Reception Perception @RecepPerception. Download and Subscribe to the Reception Perception Show anywhere you get your podcasts.

Watch segments of the show on YouTube at Matt Harmon!!

To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Limited battery warranty covers defects and materials for 10 years or 100,000 miles which ever occurs first. Sea owners manual for complete warranty details and limitations. Visit 100USA.com or call 563-144603 for more details. This is Reception Reception, the show. Now James Cole and Matt Harmon. Pittsburgh. Third few is passing yards in the NFL. A lot of this obviously is going to be pace of play. It's the quarterback Justin Fields has been playing. You know, you're not going to get all that much out of the passing game and quite frankly other than George Pickens. They just don't have that many answers. They don't have that many bodies. In the wide receiver room. So Matt, this is probably the most difficult one. But you are the only person on earth that is a little bit of a Arthur Smith, a little bit of an Arthur Smith apologist. Not a full, not a full apologist, but just a little bit. How does Matt Harmon go about fixing this Pittsburgh passing attack? I mean, get better players. That's obviously not going to happen at this point. Step one, get better players. Step one would be to get better players, but we are probably past that point. We're going to just be rocking with Van Jefferson and the boys there from wide receiver to on on the depth chart, which is just, you know, there's only so much you're going to do at that point. But I would note that their passing game is very interesting because it's, I think, makes sense from adjusted fields. Arthur Smith, George Pickens, perspective, their 25th and drop back success rate, but their 15th and drop back EPA. Some of that is some scrambles and stuff, although I don't know that they've totally made use of Justin Fields as a just designed rusher just yet. You know, so from a scramble perspective, that's going to be part of, I think you'd get more of him. Like, I think you should have more freedom to take off and go. So that's going to boost the EPA there. But also, I think they've hit some big plays, especially in week one against the Falcons. I thought they hit some big plays there. I got to tell you, man, you know, let's talk about this on a sicko show. Is that last week that I think George Pickens has looked great this year. I think this has been the best George Pickens has looked on film since his college RP profile. You know, I think that he's a player that we've talked a lot on the show because I've always said you can't really have a normal conversation about George Pickens. I'm ready to have a conversation about George Pickens and how good he looks. All right, let's go. And I think he looks at this point like a guy that should be getting 28% of this passing game. And he's at 25% in terms of targets. He's 53% in terms of ariards. I'd like to see those numbers kicked up. I'd like to see him never leave the field. You know, he's at about in terms of routes run. He's actually second on the team behind Van Jefferson. I know they want Van out there to, you know, not break tendencies because he's a, he's a decent blocker is kind of the idea and like, all right, we're in 13 personnel with all of our tight ends on the field. You know, Michael Pruitt and Darnell Washington and Pat Firemouth. And okay, we have maybe Van Jefferson and some single receiver looks there. But okay, I don't need any of that anymore. Tendency break, whatever, I think Pickens has played this isn't been the thing with Pickens is I think he's had, I think he's just had some effort issues. We talked about the show. Tom has talked about the coaching staff has talked about. It's been a national media talking point at times. I think he's had some effort issues. So far this year, I think he looks locked the FN, which is really cool to see because when he is, he is popping off, especially against press made coverage and especially on outside breaking routes. And you know, he's a guy that you look at the box score. Yeah, 29 yards in week two. That was a much better game than that. That was another game that after the 10 game on slot in week one, or excuse me, in the 1 p.m. window in week two, you know, you only have three games in the late windows. So you're forced to have Bronco Steelers on one of the screens. Totally. And I thought he was running some great routes, especially and this has always been where Pickens has been the strongest is off the line of scrimmage. I think he has great pacing and footwork against press coverage and he's going against Pat Sertan against the Broncos on the vast majority of these routes, but he's getting off the line really well. And he had a couple of plays called back due to penalty. Broderick Jones, who they can't even figure out if they want to play right now, he's rotating with their first round pick from this past year. Like, I think that's about enough already of that. But he kind of, you know, there was a great, beautiful play where fields rolls out, flicks it downfield on a go route to George Pickens, who just, he just has just the slightest bit of separation, wins the ball on past Sertan, his day would look much better if that was in the box score. So I think Pickens is playing great. I'd like to see just more and more of Pickens. And I think the longer that they are just committed to Justin Fields, I think the more they'll start to put on his plate. I mean, that throw by Fields was outrageous. Crazy. Crazy. It really is a shame that it didn't count. Like, they should have just counted it just because it was so cool. Yeah. Come on. Did Project Jones hold really matter? I don't know. I don't know what I heard of the cool points, man. It looked awesome, dude. Come on, man. That was a great throw. Great throw. Great catch. And, okay, so let me ask you this about Pickens. What an interesting player he is, because when you take a look at some of the charting data from 2023, right? We're talking about a guy that was 50th percentile versus man coverage. That's not going to get the job done. He was 17th percentile versus zone. And I get it. 23% of his routes were on the nine route, hard to beat zone coverage when you're running a bunch of nine routes. I get it. But that being said, look, he had a pretty high slant percentage, curl percentage, dig percentage as well. And when you're talking about 17th percentile versus zone, that's an alarming score to me, right? Okay. How much of that, again, do you think effort played into some of these scores? Oh, I think there's no question that effort is a part of it. You know, again, this is a guy whose coaching staff has previously challenged him right on the effort stuff and things like that. I think that I think Mike Tomlin is the perfect guy to have George Pickens on his team. You know, I think that's going to be great. It's, you know, it's not. It's not that it's not that I think it's always effort. I think some of it is technique lapses too. Yeah. Yeah. Because, and this is the frustrating thing with Pickens, man, is because I think when you go back and you look at his prospect profile, like forget the stuff in the NFL for a second, I thought he was a really good route runner in the short and underneath area in his prospect profile. You know, obviously, again, the press coverage success rate is the, is, is the best part. 86th percentile success rate versus press is a prospect, but he's right south of 80% success rate versus zone, 79.7%. And, wow, honestly, it wasn't even the, it wasn't even the downfield routes. Again, revisiting the prospect profile, slight route success rate, 82.4%, curl route success rate, 81.6%, come back route success rate, 88.9%, which is a great score. And he's running all these routes at least within or above the prospect average. So I thought he was a good route runner for his size and his type of player arc type in college. We just haven't seen it consistently in the NFL yet. And look, it's only two weeks. I'm totally willing to, you know, this, maybe this changes or whatever. I just think he might be one of these guys that is a little bit, you know, if I could give a comparison. I think maybe he's like a DJ more type of player where route running year one. And look, they actually are not, I mean, in terms of player similarity, I don't think they're similar at all. But okay, okay, I heard your skepticism. I was about to bring up something, but okay, okay, good. But I'm talking about journey comparables in perception, perception because if you look back at DJ Moore's RP profile from his rookie year, kind of a mess as a route runner, 52.7% success rate versus man, actually worse than Pickens was. And then he gets a little bit better in year two. He jumps up from 47% success rate versus press to 68%. And then 2020 to 2022, he was just, you know, really locked in over 70% success rate versus man, you know, in really good rates against zone and press and stuff like that. So I think he could be one of those guys that maybe is like a year three RP breakout type of player. You could be in that bucket. I love it. By the way, it should be mentioned to you that this team did trade away Deontay Johnson. You have to think, and again, this is pure speculation. You got to think at some point they talked to George Pickens though and said, "Hey, listen, we got rid of DJ. We need you to step up." Totally. You know what I mean? Totally. And I was it. I don't know if it was on this show or another show because, you know, I do too many podcasts. But I also kind of think that, you know, Pickens, look, he's a, he's an interesting dude. Okay, we've all seen four sure. We've followed his NFL career. We saw him the day was drafted, you know, in that little get up that he had there looking at the TV. He's an interesting guy. He clearly is an emotional player. That's okay. I'm totally for that. I'm not anti any of that stuff. But, you know, sometimes those type of dudes when you're able to come in there and say like, you're, you're the dog. You're the, you're the alpha dog here. Okay. This is all about you. We're going to run this thing through you. They take that and they go. That is totally a guess by me. I have no idea. But I think that part of the calculus of, okay, look, we're going to get worse in the wide receiver room as a whole by trading Deontay Johnson. That is just a fact. No matter what you think about Deontay Johnson, where he ranks in the league, whatever, they are worse in the receiver room without Deontay Johnson. But, but do you get a better version of George Pickens clearly telling him you're the guy, you know, you are the guy here. I wonder if that's true. I think also just from a talent evaluation standpoint, I think it's smart, right? Because you trade away Deontay Johnson. Obviously it hurts your team overall. But from a talent evaluation standpoint, you now know what you have for sure 100% in George Pickens. And to be honest with you, the reason people can't have a normal conversation about Pickens is the defenders look at the highlight plays and they see the highs. And the people who don't think that Pickens can play looks at a large chunk of plays that he takes off, a large chunk of plays where there's no effort, a large chunk of plays where you're like, man, this is not professional behavior. You know, and so that is why there's that juxtaposition. That's why there's that conflict, man. But for the front office for the Pittsburgh Steelers, now they get a very clear picture. Do they not? They get a very clear picture of, okay, this is the player. If he doesn't step up, we know he's a problem and we probably should not extend him. If he does step up, maybe we can build around him. I don't know. In this crazy, you know, wide receiver, happy NFL that we've got right now, you need those answers. You need those answers. Yeah. And I mean, he's a guy who's a, he was a day two draft pick. He's going into it. He's in his third season. This will be time after this year to talk extension for sure because it's the last year of his deal. So yeah, based on the way he's played through two weeks, it's tough. Like you just hope you continue to get this over 17 games and the whole deal. If you do, he would be a guy to have no problem. Like, let's lock it in and let's build this offense through him. So yeah, when we're talking about the Pittsburgh Steelers, it's, I do think the answer is more George Pickens. I also think sneakily, you know, I know we're talking about the passing game. I think the run game has been okay. Like I said, I don't think it's been totally passable. I mean, from an efficiency standpoint, they're 29th in rushing EPA. They're 29th in rushing success rate. I think some of that is the Justin Fields design run play is like, let's also, let's be real about this. I know, I know that the Russell Wilson aspect of this all is a little tough because he's, you know, lurking, literally and figuratively behind Justin Fields. I think he's crazy in uniform, dude. Like you're not active dog. Like you're not going to play. Why are you putting the shoulder pads on, dude? Like what's going on? I don't know. But, you know, this team probably thought for a long time, like, yeah, we're going to start Justin. We're going to start Russell for however long and we'll just see how it goes. We're going to run a very safe little kind of cookie cutter pass game. Totally. You know, I think that the more, I think that the more they have fields around as the starter, I think that they can maybe do more with him as a design rusher. I think right now it's mostly been just purely design quarterback run game, not so much option. I'd love to see more option with these two guys, especially Jalen Warren in the back that I think would be sick. And then also just, I think the pass game designs have been good under Arthur Smith this year in terms of let's get pickens, the type of throws that he wants and let's get fields, the type of throws that he wants. And those happen to overlap pretty perfectly together. But once they figure out more about fields, the rusher and like how we can exploit this quarterback run game, I think the whole offense will get better both run game and pass game. It takes a lot to prepare for game day as a dedicated fan and preparing the perfect tailgate meal might be the most important of all. That's why Best Foods Real Manace is the MVP. Best Foods Manace is the secret to bring out the rich and creamy taste to all your game day dishes, from buffalo chicken dip to your favorite sub sandwich and everything in between. 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