In writing up five NFL players who enjoyed significant breakouts in 2025, ESPN’s Ben Solak was all but compelled to include Cowboys wide receiver George Pickens. By any measure, the Cowboys’ experiment to pair him alongside CeeDee Lamb was indeed a massive success, as Pickens turned in career-best numbers and earned his first Pro Bowl nod and All-Pro honors (second-team).
“We’ve thought Pickens could be good for a while,” writes Solak, but few could legitimately have expected what the mercurial Steeler went on to do over his first year in Dallas. And while his mere attendance at Cowboys minicamp this week was met with both a collective sigh of relief from fans and universal praise from coaches and teammates, Solak points out that things could easily change. And Pickens is still uniquely primed to wind up in a new uniform sometime soon.
First, the catapult of Pickens’s game into another stratosphere.
Despite being the bookend to a superstar in Lamb — who was coming off three straight seasons of 150 or more targets — Pickens nevertheless produced at a remarkable clip, much more so than his years in Pittsburgh had shown.
2025 saw Pickens targeted 29% more than his previous high-water mark, make 47% more catches, log 25% more yards, and haul in a whopping 80% more touchdowns.
Per Solak, Pickens ran more vertical routes in the Cowboys offense, upped his successful reception rate by more than 15 percentage points, and finished second in the league in receptions that either moved the sticks or scored.
While he points out “it’s tempting to call Pickens’s 2025 a trend with a full chest’s worth of confidence,” there is at least a sliver of hesitation.
If the Cowboys were fully sold on Pickens doing that every season, they arguably would have given him a long-term extension rather than place the franchise tag on him.
The $27.3 million they’re set to pay Pickens this year is a hefty one-year raise, to be sure, but it can also be seen as a hint that the organization isn’t convinced he won’t revert to frustrated outbursts, mental lapses, and overly-physical, heavily-penalized play style that got him shipped out of the Steel City.
Despite the “small but palatable” risk, Solak suggests the potential for that kind of regular production from the now-25-year-old is why “smart teams should be trying to trade for Pickens’s tagged contract and extend him before the July 15 deadline.”
The fanbase may not want to hear it, but a step back from the warm and fuzzy headlines coming out of The Star, proves it makes sense as a very real possibility.
Yes Pickens showed up to minicamp and avoided monetary fines; he was following his agent’s instructions and the locker room brotherhood was all smiles again. But a WR-needy team offering high draft picks and ponying up $40 million per year in exchange for a malcontent is a tough sell. By being a model citizen in June, Pickens and agent David Mulugheta are already creating a more attractive package for prospective buyers in July and beyond.
The team held Pickens out of actual minicamp practices, they explained, to “be smart” and to let him re-acclimate after not being present for OTAs. “We can’t have him getting hurt coming down with a ball in these half-speed walkthroughs because then NO ONE will call us with a blockbuster trade offer” might be another way to say the same thing.
The Cowboys added veteran wide receivers Marquez Valdes-Scantling in April and Denzel Mims just this week. Of course, neither is in striking distance of Pickens talent level. But maybe the team is stocking the shelves because they believe one of the shiny showroom models might get moved as other clubs take post-minicamp stock of their own receiver rooms and decide to go shopping.
The Cowboys and Pickens have until July 15 until the tag becomes official. But another team could trade for Pickens and extend him before the deadline… before another strong campaign sends Pickens’s price tag well north of $40 million. And even if it doesn’t happen in the next month, all it takes is for somebody’s top pass-catcher to go down in camp or early in the season to heat up those phone lines, even if they’d have to wait a year to invoke the new deal.
While Pickens was magnificent for Dallas in 2025 — and almost certainly will be again in 2026 —there’s an awful lot of writing on a whole lot of walls that suggests Pickens’s status as a Cowboy could go from “breakout” to “shipped out.”
Todd is on X at @ToddBrock24f7. Also, follow Cowboys Wire on Facebook to join in on the conversation with fellow fans!
This article originally appeared on Cowboys Wire: ESPN thinks Cowboys breakout 2025 star makes for perfect summer trade
Reporting by Todd Brock, Cowboys Wire / Cowboys Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Todd Brock, Cowboys Wire | USA TODAY Network
