OXNARD, Calif. (AP) — The Dallas Cowboys are confident George Pickens the player will be a problem for opponents because Pickens the person won’t cause problems in their own locker room.
That might be a surprise given Pickens’ three often tumultuous seasons playing wide receiver for the Pittsburgh Steelers before he was traded to Dallas in May.
“Like, I’ve seen what y’all seen on film, like, trust me,” wide receiver CeeDee Lamb said. “I know what it looks like. But if you talk to this man and have a decent conversation, I guarantee you’ll understand that this man is kindhearted.”
Pickens, 24, had multiple notable on-field incidents in Pittsburgh to create a questionable reputation. He had two unsportsmanlike conduct penalties in a Week 13 win at Cincinnati last season after having been involved in an altercation with Cleveland Browns cornerback Greg Newsome the previous week.
Those occasions, along with sideline blowups at teammates and coaches, led Steelers coach Mike Tomlin to rebuke Pickens several times, memorably saying “ He’s just got to grow up, man ” after receiving two flags but avoiding being tossed against the Bengals in December.
The reasons behind Pickens’ public persona, Dallas players insist, come from his desire to win.
“He loves football, so that’s something that you cannot question about him,” wide receiver Jalen Tolbert said. “That speaks and jumps off the tape, obviously, and jumps off the field, and obviously in the meeting room, he can do the same thing.”
The Cowboys are working with Pickens to reign in his frustrations, but Lamb stressed the how different Pickens is outside the lines.
“When we get on the field, it’s a different beast,” Lamb said. “I expect him to be an animal. But, like, we have an on and off button. Everybody on this field does. On any field, honestly. It’s just, man, when you passionate about something, you don’t really care what the narrative is around you.”
Lamb and Pickens have seemingly become fast friends, often sharing information and dance moves on the practice field. They even worked up an elaborate handshake to celebrate touchdowns, which Lamb said took two days to fully choreograph.
“He’s a great receiver, he’s a great person,” Lamb said. “He’s everything that the people say he isn’t, and I feel like he don’t get enough credit for being who he is. But you never know the situation that people are going though, so just being so quick to put a narrative on something that you don’t really fully understand yet, I feel like it’s kind of jumping the gun. But as for GP, man, he’s a hard worker. He wants to be great. He’s wanting to learn, and I love that the most about him because I’m the same way.”
Despite flashing star potential while putting up solid statistics in Pittsburgh, amassing 2,841 yards receiving and 12 touchdowns even with subpar quarterback play in three seasons, Pickens was as ready as the Steelers were for a separation. As soon as he arrived in Dallas and met with Cowboys owner Jerry Jones following the trade, Pickens believed he was in the right place to redefine his career.
“I think I needed a fresh start just in terms of, like you said, people not knowing me,” Pickens said.
The challenge now is making sure quarterback Dak Prescott and Pickens can develop an understanding on the field. Their timing, or lack thereof, has shown up occasionally during the first week of training camp, such as when Pickens couldn’t come down with an over the shoulder basket catch that hit him in the hands on a deep sideline route Saturday.
But once those issues are addressed, Pickens expects to form perhaps the most potent one-two receiver tandem in the NFL.
“A lot of people over the years got different type of styles of play, but CeeDee’s a certain type of guy and then I’m a certain type of guy, so when you mesh that together it’s like ‘Mario Bros,’ you see what I mean? So we can definitely do something special,” Lamb said.
Cornerback Kaiir Elam delivered the most memorable moment of Saturday's workout, intercepting Prescott and then celebrating by reaching over the sideline railing to grab a fan's infant to raise over his head with both hands, echoing Disney's 1994 animated hit film “The Lion King.”
“I'm just trying to give the people a show,” Elam said. “I seen one of the guys who was like, ‘I don’t know about this kid picking up my kid.' But the kid was excited, that's all that matters.”
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Dallas Cowboys cornerback Andrew Booth, left, prevents wide receiver George Pickens from catching a pass during training camp Saturday, July 26, 2025, in Oxnard, Calif. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
The Pentagon said Thursday that it is changing the independent military newspaper Stars and Stripes so it concentrates on “reporting for our warfighters” and no longer includes “woke distractions.”
That message, in a social media post from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's spokesman, is short on specifics and does not mention the news outlet's legacy of independence from government and military leadership. It comes a day after The Washington Post reported that applicants for jobs at Stars and Stripes were being asked what they would do to support President Donald Trump's policies.
Stars and Stripes traces its lineage to the Civil War and has reported news about the military either in its newspaper or online steadily since World War II, largely to an audience of service members stationed overseas. Roughly half of its budget comes from the Pentagon and its staff members are considered Defense Department employees.
The outlet's mission statement emphasizes that it is “editorially independent of interference from outside its own editorial chain-of-command” and that it is unique among news organizations tied to the Defense Department in being “governed by the principles of the First Amendment.”
Congress established that independence in the 1990s after instances of military leadership getting involved in editorial decisions. During Trump's first term in 2020, Defense Secretary Mark Esper tried to eliminate government funding for Stars and Stripes — to effectively shut it down — before he was overruled by the president.
Hegseth's spokesman, Sean Parnell, said on X Thursday that the Pentagon “is returning Stars and Stripes to its original mission: reporting for our warfighters.” He said the department will “refocus its content away from woke distractions.”
“Stars and Stripes will be custom tailored to our warfighters,” Parnell wrote. “It will focus on warfighting, weapons systems, fitness, lethality, survivability and ALL THINGS MILITARY. No more repurposed DC gossip columns; no more Associated Press reprints.”
Parnell did not return a message seeking details. The Daily Wire reported, after speaking a Pentagon spokeswoman, that the plan is to have all Stars and Stripes content written by active-duty service members. Currently, Congress has mandated that the publication's publisher and top editor be civilians, said Max Lederer, its publisher.
The Pentagon also said that half of the outlet's content would be generated by the Defense Department, and that it would no longer publish material from The Associated Press or Reuters news services.
Also Thursday, the Pentagon issued a statement in the Federal Register that it would eliminate some 1990s era directives that governed how Stars and Stripes operates. Lederer said it's not clear what that would mean for the outlet's operations, or whether the Defense Department has the authority to do so without congressional authorization.
The publisher said he believes that Stars and Stripes is valued by the military community precisely because of its independence as a news organization. He said no one at the Pentagon has communicated to him what it wants from Stars and Stripes; he first learned of its intentions from reading Parnell's social media post.
“This will either destroy the value of the organization or significantly reduce its value,” Lederer said.
Jacqueline Smith, the outlet's ombudsman, said Stars and Stripes reports on matters important to service members and their families — not just weapons systems or war strategy — and she's detected nothing “woke” about its reporting.
“I think it's very important that Stars and Stripes maintains its editorial independence, which is the basis of its credibility,” Smith said. A longtime newspaper editor in Connecticut, Smith's role was created by Congress three decades ago and she reports to the House Armed Services Committee.
It's the latest move by the Trump administration to impose restrictions on journalists. Most reporters from legacy news outlets have left the Pentagon rather than to agree to new rules imposed by Hegseth that they feel would give him too much control over what they report and write. The New York Times has sued to overturn the regulations.
Trump has also sought to shut down government-funded outlets like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that report independent news about the world in countries overseas.
Also this week, the administration raided the home of a Washington Post journalist as part of an investigation into a contractor accused of stealing government secrets, a move many journalists interpreted as a form of intimidation.
The Post reported that applicants to Stars and Stripes were being asked how they would advance Trump's executive orders and policy priorities in the role. They were asked to identify one or two orders or initiatives that were significant to them. That raised questions about whether it was appropriate for a journalist to be given what is, in effect, a loyalty test.
Smith said it was the government's Office of Personnel Management — not the newspaper — that was responsible for the question on job applications and said it was consistent with what was being asked of applicants for other government jobs.
But she said it was not something that should be asked of journalists. “The loyalty is to the truth, not the administration,” she said.
David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.
US soldier Sgt. John Hubbuch of Versailles, Ky., one of the members of NATO led-peacekeeping forces in Bosnia reads Stars and Stripes newspaper on Sunday Feb. 14, 1999. (AP Photo/Amel Emric, File)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stands outside the Pentagon during a welcome ceremony for Japanese Defense Minister Shinjirō Koizumi at the Pentagon, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026 in Washington. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf/)
FILE - A GI with the U.S. 25th division reads Stars and Stripes newspaper at Cu Chi, South Vietnam on Sept. 10, 1969. (AP Photo/Mark Godfrey)
