Cowboys' George Pickens announcement shows Dallas is poised to make huge mistake originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
One of the biggest offseason decisions for the Dallas Cowboys is what to do with wide receiver George Pickens.
Pickens, who is a pending free agent, is coming off a great season with the Cowboys that saw him post a career-high 1,429 receiving yards and nine touchdowns.
While stats like that would normally make Pickens a no-brainer to re-sign, it isn't that cut-and-dry for the Cowboys and the veteran wideout.
Not only are they already paying CeeDee Lamb a ton of money, but Pickens is a huge gamble given his past behavioral issues, some of which reared their ugly heads in Dallas in 2025.
Despite all that, Cowboys COO Stephen Jones made it quite clear on Monday that the plan is to keep Pickens, and the first step in that process will be slapping the franchise tag on the mercurial wideout soon.
"Stephen Jones says Cowboys will finalize franchise tag for George Pickens in the next week," NFL Network's Judy Battista reported.
“We think the world of him. We want him here,” Jones said of Pickens.
As far as a timeline for a possible contract extension is concerned, Jones would not commit to one. Of course, Dallas will have until July 15 to get a multi-year deal done or else Pickens will play the season on the franchise tag.
“I wouldn’t put any timeframe (on a contract). Once you have a (franchise) tag, you have a tag. We know George is going to be here," Jones added, per The Athletic's Jon Machota.
Based on Jones' comment, it would appear the Cowboys are more intent on signing Pickens off the franchise tag rather than trading him. If that turns out to be the case, the Cowboys will be making a huge mistake.
Bear in mind, the Cowboys are in rough shape financially, with Dallas having to climb out of a $24.5 million hole just to get to even in terms of cap space.
Committing a large sum of money to Pickens means the Cowboys are going to have less resources to address what is a far bigger priority, which is the defense — and that's especially true if Pickens ends up staying on the tag for the entire 2026 campaign, as all $28.8 million would be on Dallas' books.
We would guess Pickens has no desire to do that, and if so he could hold out and create a massive head ache for the Cowboys.
Another issue is Pickens' aforementioned behavioral issues. Pickens was considered to be on his best behavior in 2025 and he still got himself benched during one game and there were questions about his effort in others.
Banking on Pickens becoming more mature and leaving his past issues behind after getting the bag is quite the risky proposition.
We want to believe the Cowboys are smarter than this and will instead trade Pickens to the highest bidder and move on.
However, we unfortunately can't say that's the case until we actually see them do it.
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