Trades can be difficult for players, often sending them to cities and situations they never would have chosen for themselves. Michael Pittman Jr. had a different experience. He didn\u2019t land with the Steelers\u2014he chose them.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t as sporadic as people think. We kind of knew that it was coming and we had a plan,\u201d Pittman said on Sirius XM NFL Radio\u2019s Movin\u2019 The Chains<\/a>. \u201cI actually got to pick where it was, and I picked here. Obviously I was excited about it, and I had a really good idea that Aaron was coming back. I didn\u2019t know for sure, but I had some pretty strong hints. So I just wanted to come play with one of the best to ever play.\u201d<\/p>\n Sometimes general managers give players a choice out of respect, as Ryan Poles did with Justin Fields and the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2024. More often than not, a player\u2019s contract situation gives him leverage in choosing his destination. Teams acquiring a player who is dissatisfied with his contract have to consider that he won\u2019t be satisfied with his new situation, particularly if he expects an extension. Pittman\u2019s immediate extension following the trade<\/a> suggests they were in talks for days, if not weeks.<\/p>\n The Indianapolis Colts were working on signing WR Alec Pierce to a four-year, $114 million contract. Pittman had one year remaining on his contract and a large $29 million cap hit. Everybody knew they would need to make a decision, which likely opened the door for several teams to call and check in on Pittman\u2019s availability.<\/p>\n The number of teams competing for his services in the trade market is unknown, but the fact that he got to choose implies there were options.<\/p>\n Another reason he chose the Steelers was an opportunity to work with head coach Mike McCarthy.<\/p>\n \u201cYou always wanna play for an offensive coach, especially when you\u2019re an offensive player. So that also had a huge factor into me coming here,\u201d Pittman said. \u201cWhen your head coach is also the coordinator, there\u2019s an emphasis on throwing the ball. Defensive coaches, they always wanna run the ball; they wanna keep the defense off of the field. And I do wanna do that too, but I\u2019m a receiver, so selfishly I wanna pass as much as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n McCarthy\u2019s offenses have been in the top 10 for pass attempts in 10 out of his 18 seasons. Reuniting with his former quarterback should only inspire him to lean further into that.<\/p>\n Pittsburgh also finally has the personnel to support a passing offense. A year ago, leading the league in pass attempts probably would have produced abysmal results because the Steelers lacked a significant wide receiver beyond DK Metcalf. Now Metcalf, Pittman, Roman Wilson, and Germie Bernard give Rodgers arguably the deepest receiver group Pittsburgh has had in years.<\/p>\n Pittman didn\u2019t just choose the Steelers\u2014he chose a situation that could set him up to thrive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trades can be difficult for players, often sending them to cities and situations they never would have chosen…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":990872,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[39],"tags":[320677,216087,397309,1232,320678,397310,62,939,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-990871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-jacob-hester","tag-michael-pittman-jr","tag-movin-the-chains","tag-nfl","tag-pat-kirwan","tag-sirius-xm-nfl-radio","tag-sports","tag-trending","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=990871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/990872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=990871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=990871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=990871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}