On Thursday night, Cowboys receiver George Pickens dusted off some of the concerns that undermined much of his three years in Pittsburgh. But even if those on the outside question Pickens\u2019s effort against the Lions, the guy who signs his paychecks does not.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things that you got to appreciate about George Pickens is his intensity for the competition,\u201d Cowboys owner\/G.M. Jerry Jones said Tuesday on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas, via Jon Machota of TheAthletic.com. \u201cNow, he is a big-time competitor. When it comes to competing and when it comes to loving the game, I emphasize that point right there, loving the game, then I give him A-pluses<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n And so Jones continues to say things that will make it even more expensive to keep Pickens over the long haul.<\/p>\n \u201cI like what George Pickens has done all year,\u201d Jones said. \u201cJust so that I\u2019m real clear about it, I don\u2019t have the concern that [others] debate about what George Pickens did or didn\u2019t do in that game. I don\u2019t have that kind of concern about him as far as his competing and helping us win football games on the field, at all.\u201d<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the quote from Jones that Pickens\u2019s agent, David Mulugheta, should print out (if anyone still has printers) and laminate (if anyone still has laminating machines): \u201cPickens brings everything to the table. He brings enough pluses to the table to frankly live with what\u2019s going on, this type of criticism. The criticism in my mind is, is he a competitor, and when he gets out there, can he come down with the ball? Does he compete when he\u2019s out there? A-triple-plus.\u201d<\/p>\n Congratulations, Jerry. You\u2019re successfully painting yourself into a corner that will require $40 million per year in new money to escape.<\/p>\n And, once that happens, Pickens will have the upper hand in the relationship. Some would question whether he can be trusted with that kind of power. Jones apparently does not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Thursday night, Cowboys receiver George Pickens dusted off some of the concerns that undermined much of his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340367,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-340366","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-nfl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}