When the Cowboys sent a 2006 third-round pick and a 2027 fifth-round pick to the Steelers for receiver George Pickens and a 2027 sixth-round pick, Dallas inherited the final year of Pickens’s rookie deal, at a salary of $3.656 million.
They’re getting great value for the investment, for far.
Pickens has six touchdowns in the last five games. He caught nine passes for 168 yards and a touchdown during Sunday’s loss to the Panthers. He has a pair of 100-yard games in the three contests that CeeDee Lamb has missed with a high ankle sprain.
Pickens is earning his next contract, one game at a time. Appearing Tuesday on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas, Cowboys owner and G.M. Jerry Jones was asked whether the team is open to starting talks with Pickens on an extension.
“We are always looking at what we can do to basically financially improve where we are,” Jones said. “Now, you don’t financially improve without getting what you paid for. That’s a misnomer. You have to have the talent, you have to have the players, and I know you say, ‘Well, duh, that was assumed in the question.’ Well, the point is that we’ll look carefully at what we’re doing financially, look carefully at what we do there with George, and I can’t tell you how proud I am personally for George because he is absolutely as exciting as he’s been on the field for us. He’s been that kind of teammate, and he’s inspirational. Our coaches . . . enjoy coaching him. I won’t speak for the players, but he is a great teammate in my mind, and of course, when we got him, there was some issue with, ‘Well, it might be something with the way he — his personality.’ Well, I’ll tell you this, I’ll take that combination we’ve got with him any day.”
The day is coming soon when the Cowboys will have to make a decision: Extend him, tag him, or let him walk away as a free agent.
He’ll want a contract worth $30 million or more per year, and he’s proving that he’s worth it. The franchise tag for receivers in 2026 will surely be more than $25 million. (It was $23.958 million for 2025.)
It will be difficult for the Cowboys to justify that kind of investment, given the resources already devoted to receiver CeeDee Lamb ($34 million per year).
Some have suggested that the Cowboys should trade Pickens now, before the deadline. It’s not a crazy thought, given that it will not be easy to keep him. The better approach could be a tag and trade Pickens in early 2026, which would give them Pickens for the balance of the season. And if he finishes strong, Pickens could be worth even more later than he’d fetch when the trade deadline arrives in three weeks.
Regardless, the better Pickens plays, the harder it will be to keep him. Especially since any and all negotiations will happen with agent David Mulugheta — the same person Jones tried to bypass when negotiating directly with Micah Parsons.
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