Colin Cowherd thinks the Steelers are a top 5 roster

Cowherd know nothing in sports,like NFL and NBA....Just a another exemple from him,like 2 month ago in a another sport

 

Then I guess whoever plays them has the difficult schedule now.

 

I'm halfway convinced that Cowherd's "lists" are either mostly or entirely AI generated.

 

I love the Steelers soft opening with Atlanta and Denver.

Last year's Preseason Kenny Picket just rocked my world on what you can learn in Preseason. WTF.... Last year the Steelers had the #1 rated QB in the league coming out of preseason.

Count me in as one of the people that are like "Talk to me after 3 games into the regular season".

 

I tend to wait until preseason. Then, I can see with my own eyes how good or bad they are. Training camps hype has let me down so many times

 

I posted before I knew the real schedule, but we still need to hit it hard and fast because the last part of our season will be hard

 

Colin Cowherd was ripping Steelers for signing Heyward to extension. He brought up some good points. Steelers spend the most of defense in the NFL and are ahead of the 2nd place team by 30 million. Steelers are ranked with Titans as spending the least amount of money on offense.

 

I think we've gone over this before, but the reason is that we are not spending big money on offense because we have the most lucrative positions on rookie deals or a cheap hold over deal. QB obviously being Fields' rookie contract and Wilson being attainable via league minimum is the biggest deviation from expenditure. The next most expensive position is WR... We have GP on a rookie deal, Wilson on a rookie deal, Austin on a rookie deal and a cheap vet in Jefferson. We will likely add to this (and tried to add with a big money expenditure in Aiyuk). 3rd most lucrative position is LT. Both of our starting Tackles are on rookie deals.... so idk what the point of this criticism is. We spent big money on offense in the Killer B's era (95+million on offense vs 54+ million on defense in 2017 as an example), so we certainly aren't averse to having the majority of our spending on offense.

You pay your stars, simple as that. They are hard to come by and you do what you can to keep them all in your team's uniform. TJ Watt is the best pass rusher in the league, Minkah is arguably the best safety in the league, and Heyward is on a long and productive (likely Canton bound) career. We just signed a high end ILB as well. We have the defensive players on the roster, so why just let them go because we think we are SUPPOSED to spend on offense? The expenditure will find its way to flip again as we start to pay the offensive side of the ball (GP, Freiermuth, Jones, Fautanu, Frazier, Harris/Warren, QB contracts all coming in the next 4 years) and the older and more expensive defensive players fall off the payroll as they retire (Heyward will eventually retire, right? TJ Watt will be 30 next year, etc.). What if we sign Dak? There are just so many variables. I expect it to swing back and forth regularly, and the outlook of our cap expenditure can change drastically in 3-4 years quite easily.

 

He never is smart enough to think....Hmmm....90 percent of the offense is on rookie deals.....so that would explain it....no... because it doesn't fit into his narrative.

 

The steelers resign aging d guy but spent nothing to get a capable 2nd wr threat. That says it all That has nothing to do with age of either side of the ball. So what is the over under on missed games by Heyward. 8 . The steelers o line will hurt one or both our qbs by week 6 and the d which is supposed to be amazing will let crappy teams like the cardinals light up the scoreboard for a wonder 7-10 season

 

Even if they spent on an overpriced wr....they would still be one of the lowest on offense. What do you want them to do .... over spend on all the players that are still on rookie contracts.....so people that don't think about all the rookie contracts will be happy ???

 

he really is a dummy.

amazing how a personality and drive can get you places in life!

 

I get the excuses that we were/are young and those contracts are coming, in the past we paid Oline, WR, QB etc. The issues i have is finishing at or near in O in nearly every category the last few years and not make any true moves to upgrade. The money for the O will have to come,the fixation on the D has got to be balanced.

 

"soft" May I remind you of all the so called "soft" games our Steelers loss? The combine age of the QB's in the ATL. game is 73. We got the younger guy so I like our chances.

Cousins is 1-1 against us in his career. Wilson is 4-1 against Falcons. He kind of owns them

 

I remember saying during Lamar Jackson's contract situation that I would've tried to trade him to the Panthers or Texans in order to draft Stroud if I were the Ravens. THANK GOD that didn't happen. Lamar is a really good player, but CJ Stroud has a chance to surpass him as soon as this season. Imagine that team headed by Stroud (and able to spend the money to keep Queen and add to the roster).... That would have been a SB team for the next 4 years.

However it is unfortunate that all of the best QB's are in the AFC. All of the top 5 QB's are in the AFC (Mahomes, Allen, Burrow, Herbert, Jackson) with Stroud slightly behind for now. Hurts, Prescott, Stafford and Love are probably all 6-10 guys with Stroud... but Rodgers, Lawrence, and Tagovailoa are all slightly behind. I still think you can win a SB in this league with a great team and an average QB that plays great in the postseason (looking at Flacco, Foles, and Eli), which is precisely what the Lions are IMO. We either get lucky on an aging Wilson or a reclamation project in Fields, or we look to Prescott in 2025. I don't think there's a shot we're going to be bad enough to be in prime QB position in next year's draft.

 

Well the QB moves were a start, along with having 3 OL drafted out of 5 possible picks in the top 2 rounds of the previous two drafts... We tried with Aiyuk, I am sure we will either try again at the deadline for another wideout OR upgrade in the offseason when Diggs, Higgins, Cooper, and Hollywood Brown are all FA's and potentially Deebo Samuel or some other bigger name WR becomes available for trade. Pickens and Freiermuth need contracts too, so I would be shocked to see us not pay one or both of them good money for their positions next year... The spending is coming. We just needed to figure out who to keep. I'd be shocked to see this team not add to the offense this offseason via FA.

 

That’s the thing you can’t really make any conclusions from preseason. They’re just trying to see players in certain situations. They don’t game plan anything. They play vanilla defenses. Drawing conclusions from preseason is absurd. Last year is a perfect example. Some here thought bigk was the second coming of Joe Montana, but as soon as things got real the wheels fell off. A huge part of that was bigk and his significant shortcomings

 

Another 1A receiver from breaking in the top 10. I think we're somewhere between 11-15, but nowhere close to a top 5 roster

 

I don't see a trade at or near the deadline, unless the team is actually making a push. Trades happen of course, but the cost vs. what you get can be counter productive. Muth expressed a couple of weeks ago that they were negotiating, so if its close I would expect it to be announced by the end of the week.

FA next year might be interesting, but again if Pickens is their guy, I would ne expect another WR FA who is looking for big a big contract to get signed. A decision on QB has to be made, if it is one of these 2, going outside, or going to the draft if the pick is low enough.
This year will take care of itself, it will show the way for future decisions in key positions for sure.

 

Defensively we are certainly a top 5 roster. Offensively, not as much... but we have a WR #1, two young tackles to be excited about, a quality pass catching TE, and a good RB tandem. We certainly have talent on the offensive side of the ball. We just don't know if what we have at QB right now is good enough.

I think people over-value other rosters and focus more on the QB situation. We have a better complete roster than Cincinnati for example... They just have Burrow. The QB factor obviously pushes things here. If we are looking at complete roster minus the QB situation, I would agree that we are a borderline top 5 roster. It's just how much the QB factor pushes us down from there.

 

I'll tell you if we are leading (or tied) for the division lead by the deadline, it wouldn't surprise me to see us try to trade for a WR.

As for the WR signings, I do think we could spend good money on a guy. The salary cap keeps going up and if we decide to stay cheaper at that position (Russ or Fields), it would be wise for us to put some more weapons around them to make it successful. Tee Higgins market value is probably somewhere in the low 20's and paying him that to play alongside Pickens (who could be getting in the 25+ range) could be a good move. If we aren't spending 50 million at QB, why wouldn't we spend it on 2 quality WR's to help make that QB better? We are going to be in the unique position of having a metric ton of cap space in 2025. Even after the Heyward extension, we will have something like 90-95 million in space headed into next season (and could have even more if we end up clearing Holcomb's salary out of there). The Heyward extension makes me think that we are thinking we have a shot to "win now" while TJ and Minkah are still in their prime, so Prescott makes a ton of sense. We could easily lock up Freiermuth, Pickens, Prescott, and Higgins and be under the cap.... Just something to think about.

 

I think so too.

 

I don't care for his blowhard projections and musings but I do like his optimism. I say 10-7 and a wildcard spot. Will see

 

something you would expect to be written in crayon.

 

So you think paying Dak 65 million a year is the way to go? Who knows what Jones will do, but the word has been they have a deal in place, just the years are holding the signing. It's all fantasy now anyway, but thinking Russ or Fields are 'cheaper' is far fetched, cheaper than Dak, yes, but if either starts, does well, gets a play off win then the cost will go up. In a given year yes you can work the CAP, but when you talk of signing guys to huge contracts with huge guaranteed money, that's where billionaires with cash and those with assets get separated. That money needs to be put in escrow, to come up with that kind of cash is not easy for a guys like Rooney, hell it even was hard for the owner of the Browns when he gave that guaranteed money to the QB, he was scrounging for the escrow money from his holdings in TA outlets.