{"id":31780,"date":"2025-05-07T19:23:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-07T19:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/31780\/"},"modified":"2025-05-07T19:23:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T19:23:10","slug":"pittsburgh-steelers-have-big-plans-for-promising-wide-receiver-after-george-pickens-trade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/31780\/","title":{"rendered":"Pittsburgh Steelers have big plans for promising wide receiver after George Pickens trade"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Pittsburgh Steelers<\/a> expect a jump from second-year wide receiver Roman Wilson<\/a> following the George Pickens <\/a>trade. <\/p>\n

Jeremy Fowler of ESPN reports that Wilson has impressed the team in the early phases of OTAs, and they expect more out of him.<\/p>\n

\u201cTeam counting on Roman Wilson Year 2 jump. This offseason he looks like a different player than from his injury riddled rookie campaign,\u201d Fowler said.<\/p>\n

Wilson missed time with a high ankle sprain and then a subsequent hamstring strain. He played all of just five snaps in his rookie season, failing to register a stat. He missed nearly all of training camp and the preseason. <\/p>\n

Head coach Mike Tomlin said at the NFL Owners Meetings the team was expecting Wilson to make a jump, and much like Calvin Austin III, they were hoping he could put the injuries behind him.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was healthy, but healthy and football readiness were two different things to be quite honest with you. When you\u2019re coming back from injury, you\u2019re essentially getting on a moving train is the analogy that I like to use. We talk about a guy that had very little NFL experience. He was healthy at the end of the year. He was working extremely hard in practice, but a real avenue never presented itself due to the misfortune of others or what have you for him to contribute,\u201d Tomlin said. \u201cWe\u2019re expecting really good things for him in his second year. I think that\u2019s a reasonable expectation. I think from time to time guys get faced with injury and it derails their start, but by no means do we feel like it\u2019s going to define his career. Calvin Austin is an example of that. Calvin missed a significant portion of his rookie year, similar to Roman. Over the last two years he\u2019s gone on to move away from that and be a real positive contributor to our efforts. We expect similar things from Roman.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Steelers designated Wilson to return from the injured reserve, and he got two weeks of practice before the Steelers\u2019 season ended. Yet, he would not have played in those games if he had become healthy enough to get activated off injured reserve.<\/p>\n

Wilson was a third-round pick by the team out of Michigan. He profiles as a speedy slot wide receiver, and his toughness is one reason the Steelers went after him. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pittsburgh Steelers expect a jump from second-year wide receiver Roman Wilson following the George Pickens trade. Jeremy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31781,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2055],"tags":[7,5648,6,520,57,2360,426],"class_list":{"0":"post-31780","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-steelers","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-isolated","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-pittsburgh","12":"tag-pittsburgh-steelers","13":"tag-pittsburghsteelers","14":"tag-steelers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114468186023643819","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}