Time is of the essence on NFL Sundays.
Teams typically arrive to the stadium three hours before kickoff, and within 90 minutes the final determinants on who is going to play are done.
So when the Pittsburgh Steelers made the surprise move to hold out George Pickens ahead of Sunday’s win against the Cleveland Browns, it left many scrambling, including Steelers WR Scotty Miller, who would go on to have a big catch later in the game:
Scotty Miller Learned he was playing Minutes before Inactives
Scotty Miller was sitting at his locker in his regular clothes when he was told about 3 mins before the inactives were announced that Pickens was out and he was dressing.
– Mark Kaboly, The Pat McAfee Show, Via X-Twitter
“To be quite honest with you, we didn’t want a small problem to become a big problem, and so we put a helmet on Scotty Miller,” said HC Mike Tomlin when asked about the decision to sit George Pickens despite his optimism as recent as hours before kickoff. “And as you can see, most of the time when you put the helmets on the healthy guys, man, they take care of the rest. Scott, he made some plays for us, and thankful for that. That’s another example of the team component of this game…
“…Man, you can waste a lot of time worried about the guys that are unavailable to you. We choose to focus our energies on the guys that are available to us, their preparedness and then ultimately their play. Tip of the cap, Scotty Miller, man stepping up and making some big plays for us.”
As media and fans would come to learn after the game, it wasn’t only Miller that was caught off guard by his abrupt call to action, but the majority of the team and all of the WRs had no idea George Pickens wasn’t going to play, only fueling the conspiracy fodder:
Pat Freiermuth told the media after the game that he too was caught off guard by the news, saying that learned Pickens would be siting via a text from his father of all people and places.
So for Miller, he deserves a tip of the cap and a ton of credit, as his professionalism showed up big in what ended up being a game-sealing grab on the sideline down the stretch.
Maybe Pickens learned a little something while watching that kind of effort and professionalism from the sideline.
