The Cowboys want to keep George Pickens, and the Pro Bowl wide receiver wants to remain in Dallas. The team has the franchise tag available to use on the pending free agent, but the question is whether the sides can negotiate a long-term deal.
Pickens said he is “willing to do anything” when asked his thoughts on the franchise tag, but he makes clear his belief that his value increased after his career year. He caught 93 passes for 1,429 yards and nine touchdowns.
“I feel like, if anything, it went up,” Pickens said, via Tommy Yarrish of the team website. “But me personally, my value is just a playmaker-type-of guy. I feel like any team or wherever I play — I can be playing in Canada — I just want them to know that I’m definitely a playmaker.”
The Cowboys traded with the Steelers for Pickens in the 2025 offseason. Dak Prescott is the best quarterback Pickens has played with, and it showed. His previous best season was 63 receptions for 1,140 yards and five touchdowns in 2023.
All things being equal, Pickens wants to remain in Dallas.
“I would love to,” Pickens said. “But when you can’t control it, you kind of just hope for the best.”
In other words, football is a business.
“Just the ultimate best deal when it helps everybody,” Pickens said. “If it’s the best thing for both parties, then I’m willing to do anything. But like I said, I can’t control it, so I just kind of chill.”
Steelers Clips
Jahri Evans will find out later this week if he has been elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but he’ll have a new job for the 2026 season either way.
The Steelers announced that the longtime Saints guard has been hired as their assistant offensive line coach. Evans held the same job for the Saints in 2025 and he played his final NFL season for Steelers head coach Mike McCarthy when McCarthy was the Packers’ head coach in 2017.
Evans was one of five coaching additions announced on Monday afternoon. The Steelers confirmed their reported additions of offensive line coach James Campen and wide receivers coach Adam Henry while also hiring running backs coach Ramon Chinyoung. They also announced that they will retain quarterbacks coach Tom Arth.
Chinyoung was the Cowboys’ assistant offensive line coach in 2025 and he was on McCarthy’s staff in Dallas the previous two seasons. Arth is heading into his third season with the Steelers.
The Steelers are interviewing offensive coordinator candidate Scott Tolzien on Monday and they also officially added three other coaches to Mike McCarthy’s staff.
They have hired defensive pass game coordinator/defensive backs coach Jason Simmons and chief of staff Steve Scarnecchia. They also retained inside linebackers coach Scott McCurley from their 2025 staff.
Simmons played for the Steelers and coached under McCarthy with the Packers, so he’s familiar with both his boss and the surroundings in Pittsburgh. He was the defensive pass game coordinator for Washington the last two seasons.
McCurley was on McCarthy’s staffs in both Green Bay and Dallas before joining the Steelers for Mike Tomlin’s final season on their sideline. Scarnecchia had the same role with the Falcons and Jets in recent seasons.
The Steelers could take a step toward filling a crucial spot on Mike McCarthy’s coaching staff on Monday.
Tom Pelissero of NFL Media reports that they will interview Saints quarterbacks coach Scott Tolzien for the offensive coordinator spot on McCarthy’s staff. Word of their interest in Tolzien first surfaced last week.
Tolzien joined the Saints last year and spent the previous five seasons working with McCarthy in Dallas. He was the quarterbacks coach for the final two seasons as McCarthy’s run as the Cowboys’ head coach.
McCarthy also coached Tolzien when he was a quarterback for the Packers from 2013-2015, so landing the Steelers job would continue a long-running relationship between the two men.
The Steelers have found a new special teams coordinator.
Via Tom Pelissero of NFL Media, Pittsburgh is expected to hire Danny Crossman for the role.
Crossman, 59, is a longtime special teams coach. After coaching at the college level for several years, he made his way to the pros as a Panthers special teams assistant in 2003. He’s since served as special teams coordinator for Carolina, Detroit, Buffalo, and Miami.
Crossman will replace Danny Smith, who left the organization this offseason to work for the Buccaneers.
The Steelers made Patrick Graham’s hiring official, announcing him as their defensive coordinator on Friday.
He spent the last four seasons as the Raiders’ defensive coordinator, his 17th year coaching in the NFL.
Graham joins Mike McCarthy’s staff after interviewing for the Dolphins’ head coaching job and the Commanders’ defensive coordinator job.
He joined the Raiders as a member of Josh McDaniels’ staff in 2022, and he remained with the team through the changes to Antonio Pierce and Pete Carroll. The Raiders fired Carroll after one season.
Graham served as the defensive coordinator for the Dolphins in 2019 and for the Giants in 2020-21. He spent seven seasons in various roles with the Patriots and has also worked as an assistant with the Packers.
During the 2025 season, with the Pitt Panthers and Pittsburgh Steelers playing their home games at Acrisure Stadium and tearing up the playing surface (which at one point was, per Aaron Rodgers, “borderline unplayable”), former Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger had a suggestion.
He also suggested building a smaller stadium for Pitt, one that would be more full than Acrisure for Pitt home games. With a move out of the venue by Pitt unlikely and impractical, Pitt has made an important adjustment to its residence at the Steelers’ stadium.
Via Chris Peak of 247sports.com, Pitt will reduce the capacity from 68,400 to 51,416. That will take Pitt from having the second-largest capacity in the ACC to the tenth.
The reduction, by nearly 25 percent of available tickets, will happen by closing the upper decks on the east and west sidelines. The area above the north end zone will remain available to Pitt students, as part of their 10,000-seat allotment.
The goal is to concentrate the folks who show up for the game toward the field.
“We’re incredibly fortunate to play in Pittsburgh,” coach Pat Narduzzi said in a press release. “It’s the toughest town out there, blue-collar through and through, with fans who bring passion that you dream of playing in front of. We want opponents to feel that toughness the second they step into Acrisure.
“This move is going to bring our fans closer to the action and crank up the energy in a world-class stadium. Our guys are looking forward to amplifying our home-field advantage in one of the ACC’s best venues.”
There’s an added benefit to shutting down the upper decks for the two biggest seating areas in the stadium. It reduces operating costs. No security in the upper deck. No concessions for the upper deck. No cleanup of the upper deck.
The average attendance for Pitt games in 2025 was 51,845.
Still, the best long-term approach would be for Pitt to have its own stadium, one with capacity that matches its normal attendance. It creates a better atmosphere, and it avoids awkward UFL-style TV images of full sections of empty seats.
Especially in Pittsburgh, where the seats are bright, glaring yellow.
Steelers head coach Mike McCarthy will be bringing one of his Green Bay assistants with him to Pittsburgh.
Adam Schefter of ESPN reports that James Campen will be hired as the team’s offensive line coach.
Campen played for the Packers from 1989-1993 and joined their staff in 2004. McCarthy was hired as their head coach in 2006 and Campen coached the offensive line through the 2018 season.
Campen moved on to the Browns, Chargers, Texans and Panthers before leaving the coaching ranks after the 2023 season. He has most recently been working in a scouting role for the Packers.
The Steelers are looking to bring in another assistant new head coach Mike McCarthy has plenty of familiarity with.
Per Jeremy Fowler of ESPN, Pittsburgh plans to interview New Orleans quarterbacks coach Scott Tolzien for its offensive coordinator vacancy.
Tolzien, 38, played under McCarthy as a backup quarterback for the Packers from 2013-2015. Tolzien then coached under McCarthy with the Cowboys from 2020-2024, first as a coaching assistant and then as the team’s QBs coach for his last two seasons there.
In 2025, Tolzien worked with rookie Tyler Shough, helping him finish the season having completed 67.6 percent of his passes for 2,384 yards with 10 touchdowns and six interceptions in 11 games with nine starts.
The Steelers are continuing to round out their coaching staff with an assistant from the AFC West.
According to Gerry Dulac of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Steelers are close to hiring Patrick Graham as defensive coordinator.
Graham, 47, had been with the Raiders since 2022 when he was hired by Josh McDaniels to be the club’s defensive coordinator. He stayed on under former Raiders coaches Antonio Pierce and Pete Carroll.
Graham previously worked for the Patriots from 2009-2015 as a defensive assistant. He then was the Giants’ defensive line coach from 2016-2017 before McCarthy hired him in 2018 to be Green Bay’s linebackers coach and run game coordinator.
From there, Graham was the Dolphins’ defensive coordinator in 2019 and the Giants’ assistant head coach and defensive coordinator from 2020-2021.
Additionally, Dulac reports McCarthy is looking to hire former Packers offensive line coach James Campen and former Cowboys assistant line coach Ramon Chinyoung. McCarthy is also expected to retain three members of former head coach Mike Tomlin’s staff: linebackers coach Scott McCurley, quarterbacks coach Tom Arth, and secondary coach Gerald Alexander.
