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Report: George Pickens' Steelers tenure was worse 'behind closed doors' than most thought

Report: George Pickens' Steelers tenure was worse 'behind closed doors' than most thought

USA Today10-05-2025

Report: George Pickens' Steelers tenure was worse 'behind closed doors' than most thought
George Pickens is now a Dallas Cowboy — and while Steelers fans may have regretted the lack of a succession plan following the trade, longtime sportswriter and Steelers correspondent for The Pat McAfee Show, Mark Kaboly, argued it could be for the best.
Kaboly made an appearance on 93.7 The Fan's livestream and cleared up what truly happened between Pickens and the Steelers:
"I got a sense that it was a little bit more uglier than you thought — behind closed doors."
Kaboly concluded with some frightening food-for-thought regarding Pickens' immaturity that had been in the spotlight — versus what went unseen:
"If you're hearing [Pickens' antics] that people are saying, imagine the stuff that you're not hearing. I think there's a lot of stuff that we still don't know. After all this went through, saying 'Oh geez, if you would've known this, [the trade] would have made a ton of sense.'"
Ultimately, we may never truly know what the Steelers organization went through with Pickens behind closed doors. If it was as bad as Kaboly speculated, perhaps there was no way Pittsburgh could have fathomed franchise tagging and trading him after the 2025 season — when giving him away for pennies to the Cowboys got him out of the Steel City the fastest.

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