The Dallas Cowboys have made it quite clear that they expect star receiver George Pickens to be on the field when the team starts its training regimen. The Cowboys offered Pickens a contract back in late February–the one-year franchise tag deal–and though Pickens poked around for possible free-agent/trade offers from other teams, none came to fruition. So, last month, he signed the tag agreement that will give him $27 million for the 2026 season. Thus, Pickens is under contract and expected to conduct himself accordingly.
But there is a wrinkle in all of that: OTAs. That’s organized team activities, the first thrust the players have at starting to work together for the upcoming season, an especially important time for the defense, with new coordinator Christian Parker in place. All coaches would like their full roster of players to be on hand for OTAs, but that never happens. They are, after all, voluntary. Players do not have to show and thus, some particularly secure veterans prefer to work out on their own.
Probably Question 1 that will be asked around the Cowboys when they finally open OTAs this week is, thus, an obvious one: Is George Pickens there?
George Pickens Could Send Positive Message at Cowboys OTAs
Again, he does not have to be. It would certainly be a major signal and an olive branch if Pickens–with whom owner Jerry Jones and COO Stephen Jones said they would not even negotiate a long-term deal–showed up at Cowboys OTAs when they open at The Star on Monday. The message would be that no matter his contract status, he’s ready to repeat last year’s remarkable 1,426-yard performance, the fourth-most yards in a single season in team history.
In the long term, that might be ideal for Pickens, who still needs to put away whatever residual chatter there is about his attitude and work ethic, questions that dogged him in the first three years of his career before he was dealt to the Cowboys. Showing up, collecting his $27.3 million franchise tag money (nothing to sneeze at) and producing will set him up for a big payout next year.
George Pickens Could Limit His Offseason Participation
It’s likely that Pickens will skip OTAs, though, and send the Cowboys a bit of a different message in doing so. By not participating in voluntary practices, Pickens would basically be telling the Cowboys that they played hardball with his contract, so he is going to play hardball with the practice time he gives them.
The defense that the Joneses use for giving Pickens the franchise tag instead of a new long-term deal is that the tag is a tool teams have in the CBA, and no one should be mad if a team uses it. Pickens can turn that around and say, OTAs are voluntary, so if you’re going to try to do the bare minimum on my contract, I’m going to do the bare minimum in offseason work.
All Cowboys Expected at Minicamp
Now, it gets much different if Pickens were to miss the mandatory portion of the Cowboys’ pre-training camp workouts. That is the mandatory minicamp from June 16-18. The expectation is that he will show up for that.
“Certainly, that’s what we expect,” Jones said (via The Athletic’s Jon Machota on Twitter/X). “I mean, anytime a player signs a contract and the expectations, as we hold for all of our players, is when you sign up and you’re under contract then you’re expected to do what your teammates are doing. And certainly, you know, go back to Dak (Prescott), I know (Pickens) is working with Dak and those type of things, but at the end of the day, you know, we will see how this thing plays out.”
Cowboys’ George Pickens Watch Is On as OTAs Loom