Insider expands on what Steelers players thought about George Pickens before trade to Cowboys

Shortly after the Pittsburgh Steelers agreed to trade mercurial wide receiver George Pickens to the Dallas Cowboys, NFL insider and ESPN personality Peter Schrager mentioned that he believed Pickens "wasn't a disliked player in" the Steelers' building. 

That said, it appears some of Pickens' former teammates aren't losing sleep over the fact that he'll be featuring for the Cowboys this coming season. 

During a Sunday evening appearance on the "#1 Cochran Sports Showdown," Steelers insider Mark Kaboly of "The Pat McAfee Show" expanded on why Pittsburgh head coach Mike Tomlin wanted Pickens out of the locker room before training-camp practices get underway later this summer. 

"I think it needed to be done," Kaboly said about the trade, as shared by Matthew Marczi of Steelers Depot. "I think it was getting really ugly behind the scenes there. And I think some of the players of veteran leadership weren't too thrilled with George. I don't know the timeline on that. So I think that pushed it to the edge."

Days before news of the trade broke, NFL insider James Palmer of Bleacher Report revealed that things had "not gone well behind the scenes at all between George Pickens and the Pittsburgh Steelers and everybody involved." Back in December, Tomlin said that he felt Pickens needed to "grow up" after the 24-year-old was flagged twice for unsportsmanlike conduct during a Week 13 victory over the Cincinnati Bengals. 

After Pickens allegedly showed up late for Pittsburgh's Christmas Day game against the Kansas City Chiefs and later suggested that he wasn't optimistic about the future of the Steelers offense, team owner/president Art Rooney II publicly said that "we'd like to see [Pickens] grow." 

It seems the Steelers didn't believe Pickens would grow with the club while in the final year of his rookie contract.

"I think a lot of the players were finally fed up with him, and the right players were fed up with him," Kaboly added during the segment. Kaboly also hinted that some viewed Pickens as a locker-room "cancer." 

Free-agent quarterback Aaron Rodgers has reportedly "stayed in relatively constant contact with" Tomlin since the 41-year-old visited the Steelers in March, and it's possible Rodgers had potential replacements for Pickens in mind before Pittsburgh finalized the deal with Dallas. Nevertheless, the Steelers seemingly took somewhat of a risk in assuming that the unsigned Rodgers will ultimately view the club's discarding of the talented Pickens as an addition-by-subtraction move.