FRISCO – From the way the Dallas Cowboys tell the tale?

George Pickens “hasn’t stopped smiling” since the recent trade that brought him to The Star in a trade with the Pittsburgh Steelers.

From a Steelers perspective, with officially ended the Pickens experiment after three seasons, recouping a 2026 third-round pick and a 2027 Day 3 pick swap for their troubles?

They can’t shut up about how awful it all was.

The Steelers’ logic in the trade includes the assumption that Pickens wasn’t going to receive a long-term deal with the Steelers. And maybe trading for Seattle Seahawks stud DK Metcalf only drove that point home.

DK wasn’t acquired to team with George; he was hired to replace him.

But there is more.

Pickens – immensely talented but also plagued by inconsistencies on the field and his general volatility – continues to be a daily subject of conversation in The Steel City, with media members rushing to their keyboards and their microphones to shout out the negatives that keep oozing out of Steelers HQ.

The latest?

“There has already been some stuff leaking out, like Pickens refusing to return calls/texts from his teammates,” team insider Mark Kaboly wrote.

Oh.

We already knew about the on-field tantrums and the locker-room tardiness.

We already knew that head coach Mike Tomlin said publicly that Pickens needed to “grow up.”

But he ignored teammates’ phone contact? Why?

Part of this feels like piling on, Steelers folks rushing to paint the worst possible picture of a guy in order to justify the trade.

And, to be fair, in Dallas, there has been a great effort to paint a positive picture, new head coach Brian Schottenheimer raving about how studious and unselfish and “incredible” Pickens has been as a new “America’s Team” star.

As with most things, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. And if we ever find out that Pickens is declining to return phone calls from Dak Prescott or CeeDee Lamb or Jerry Jones or Brian Schottenheimer …

We’ll let you know.