No hindsight: I hate when the Steelers prove me right like this

Last night made it very clear the Steelers' roster is poorly constructed, and they easily could be in a much better position. Many of the big decisions that led to last night's failure were mistakes that were easy to see coming. In fact, I did see them coming. Cue obligatory response that this is a look-at-me thread. I don't care. I hate that I was right about these things, but last night should have made them very clear everyone. The combined impact of these moves left the Steelers with far less talent in 2025 and beyond.

1. Drafting Troy Fautanu over Quinyon Mitchell. I can't believe people were still trying to argue this one with me after last season, but last night should have finally put any argument to rest. The Steelers had a shot at an elite corner and passed on him for a tackle who was arguably the worst player on the field last night. That is saying something with the ****show the Steelers have at safety.

Mitchell immediately became an elite cornerback for the Eagles. People told me to wait until I got to see Fautanu this season. He will show me. He did show me that he's not good. I'm sure he can improve, but he's not going to be good enough to justify passing on an All-Pro cornerback. With Fautanu starting, the running game got worse this year. The pass protection was weak, only masked by Rodgers rushing the ball out most of the season. He got abused by elite pass rushers. Go back and watch the loss to the Chargers and last night's game if you don't believe me.

The Steelers could have had two shutdown corners with Mitchell and Porter. Maybe y'all don't understand how much that allows a defense to do, but their overall talent level would be much better right now with Mitchell. It also would have kept them from wasting $10 million on Slay.

2. Trading George Pickens. If you want to claim that not trading Pickens means they wouldn't have traded for DK Metcalf, that's even better. There is no doubt at all that the Steelers would have been better off with Pickens this year. None. Last night was one of many examples of Metcalf coming up small in losses. His early drop was a killer. The Steelers had a good plan and needed to take advantage before the Texans figured things out. He might have even scored on that play. Pickens makes that catch. He is the far better player.

Not only would the Steelers have had the more talented player for 2025, they would have had their second-round pick. Anyone who wants to bring up Pickens' attitude needs to remember the stupidity and selfishness Metcalf showed in Detroit and the way he failed miserably last night. That is even before wondering what player the Steelers could have gotten with that second-round pick.

3. Keeping T.J. Watt. Watt did very little last night. I'm sure we will hear about the double-teams and chips. We will hear about the false start opposite him. What we won't hear about is him making any big plays in the playoffs because he didn't make any. He is a shell of his former self and it was easy to see coming. Edge rushers don't age well and he had a history of injuries. He broke down at the end of last season. It was time to move on. If you believe the team could have gotten a first-round pick for him, as I do, keeping him with a massive contract looks like even more of a disaster. Maybe that would have been a 2026 No. 1, so the 2025 Steelers would have been weaker, but the team had some of its best defensive performances this season without Watt.

Those are no-brainers. There should be no argument. The Steelers might not have gotten any farther this season, but they would be in much better shape going forward. They would have the young player they got with that second-round pick. They would have two shutdown corners. They would have two first-round picks in the 2026 draft. They wouldn't have Watt's albatross of a contract hanging around their necks.

There are flaws. They would have needed to find a right tackle, though I doubt they could have done much worse.

There are other moves that aren't no-brainers, but I'll include them here.

4. Signing Aaron Rodgers instead of spending the money on Sam Darnold. I know Darnold is flawed, but he is still better than what is left of Rodgers and the contract wasn't that unreasonable, especially if you aren't paying Watt. They would have needed to find a competent No. 2 receiver if they kept Pickens and didn't deal for Metcalf, but we all know they should have done that.

5. Trading Minkah Fitzpatrick for Jalen Ramsey and Jonnu Smith. I hesitate to add this one because I didn't really push hard against the trade at the time, though I didn't like it. This has been a bust in many ways. Replacing Fitzpatrick at free safety with Thornhill and then Ramsey did not work. Thornhill was so bad they cut him in mid-season. Ramsey was terrible at corner in the loss to the Bengals, then gave up way too many big plays with his mistakes at safety. He should have given up another last night, but Sawyer saved his sorry ass with the strip sack of Stroud.

Do I even have to explain why trading for Smith was a bad idea?

6. Trusting Jaylen Warren to be their No. 1 running back. I hesitate to add this one for two reasons. One is that I love Warren. The other is that it could derail this entire discussion because some of y'all go nuts if I question this decision.

Two long touchdown runs against the Lions' decimated defense are masking many deficiencies in Warren. The most important one is the Steelers just don't trust him to be a lead back. Last night was another example of it. The Texans were abusing Rodgers all night. The right approach would have been to rely on the running game, but the Steelers didn't even try. He ran for 10 yards on the opening offensive play of the game, then got only four more carries for nine yards until the garbage time possession at the end of the game. He also caught only one pass. That isn't nearly enough. Gainwell's overachievement helped mask this mistake, but it was a big part of the problem.

I had plenty wrong about the current roster. I was thrilled that they signed Queen, who has not panned out. I severely underestimated Gainwell. I thought they would miss Harris even more than they did. (If you want to assume he would have suffered the same injury as a Steeler, go right ahead.) I'm sure there are others I can't think of at the moment.

Would avoiding those mistakes have allowed the Steelers go farther un 2025? I'm not so sure. It could have also left them with nothing at receiver if they didn't pay Pickens, too, but I think it would have left them in a much better position going forward.

They would have gone into 2026 with all of the following
1. A solid Darnold at quarterback.
2. Arguably the best set of cornerbacks in the NFL.
3. A receiver that they paid, whether it be Pickens or someone like Jakobi Meyers that they acquired in a trade.
4. No albatross of Watt's contract.
5. The player they got in the second round in 2025.
6. Two picks in the first round of the 2026 draft.

The only negative going forward would be the lack of a right tackle, but I'm not sure they have one of those with Fautanu anyway.

 

You are maybe right but after years of so many different players,the result are always the same,so I am not sure it would matter

 

correct

Tomlin would FAIL with the Steelers 1975 roster - let's just get that straight here FIRST and FOREMOST.

He could not win the most prolific offense for years in the mid 2010's.....

Scribe thinks it's all players - too many here do.

It ain't - TRUST ME

It's not a CB vs. a T.

We suck.

we will wallow in MEDIOCRITY with Mike here.

Nice guy, I like him in many ways, but average coach....

we would lose w Dan Marino in HIS PRIME

 

Only thing I vehemently disagree on is Warren. I actually think I read a stat last week that warren had the most yards after contact in the league or something to that effect and rememberthat v is with this ****box O line including a TE in muth who blocks like hot garbage. I will look.

 

Watt and Pickens were the biggest flubs because it was the most obvious. Trading Pickens when we had no one else, and signing a hobbled Watt to a mega contract out of loyalty. Head scratchers



Prime Watt did nothing in the playoffs either. I’m a huge Watt fan too but I try not to lie to myself he WAS a great regular season player for us for years but the injuries finally caught up.

 

Another message board expert that the Steelers did not care to consult with.

 

Show me you missed my point without actually writing that you missed my point.

Nowhere in my post did I write that this was all on the players. Coaching was absolutely part of the problem, but your implication that it was all on Tomlin isn't accurate. Your assumption that he would have failed with the 1975 roster is laughable. If anything, his style was perfect for the early 70s.

 

I never said they should have consulted me. I have no resume to suggest that. I'm simply pointing out that these mistakes were so easy to see coming that even I pointed them out at the time.

 

The problem is they refuse to use him like a true lead back. They don't keep feeding him even if he struggles early in a game. They clearly don't think he can hold up to that sort of workload, so they end up going pass happy, which is insanely stupid against the Texans.

 

I can agree with 1&3. I think it's still too early on Fautanu/Mitchell. I also disagree on 4,5,&6.

How can you say in one sentence to give youth a chance, and in the very next sentence giving Warren a shot was the wrong move and you knew it from the start?


Does the best tandem at CB beat having a solid OL? Depends on if you already have a solid OL or not, IMO.

I had doubts about certain things this team did in preseason and TC. I can look back and see if my doubts were correct or not. But it all still requires hindsight.

 

I looked

 

1) I think TF is good. Better than we've done recently at our 1st pick (Harmon looks good too). Maybe there were better picks out there, but he's a decent pick IMO. He certainly had a bad night against tough competition though. Hopefully he learns from it. I think he'll be on the team long term...I don't know that I can say the same about Jones.

2) I agree that not keeping Pickens was a mistake. Wasn't on this board at the time, but I really liked the idea of having 2 threatening WRs for the few days before we traded Pickens. Clearly an attitude trade and not a football one. I'd rather have let him play out his contract and taken whatever comp pick we got when he left (probably the best call for WRs since they make so much in UFA and will probably yield reasonably good comp picks). Hopefully we don't go into the 3rd straight season without a 2nd NFL WR.

3) This was a business decision. He's the face of the franchise for a team that prioritizes stability over just about everything. It would be really hard for Rooney to sit up there and talk about how they are trying to win every year if they traded TJ for what would probably look like a sub-par return given his age, injury history, and the need for whatever team traded for him to sign a huge extension.

4) I think we wanted to bring Fields back. But he didn't want to stay after last season. Rodgers seemed to be our option of last resort (because I don't think there was any way they were bringing back Russ).

The crazy thing about Darnold is that the cap number this year is basically the same (a little less than Rodgers after the bonus).

But I don't think the team wanted to have the $34MM and $45MM cap hits in years 2 and 3.

I also think that the plan this year was to kind of set the table to draft a QB during the hometown draft. I really hope that we don't go all in on this and draft a QB no matter what. As seems to be the case every year, the class got a lot of hype a year ago but when it's time to draft them they don't look as good as advertised.


5) I didn't love this at the time. Minkah was dissapointing re: big plays. But he was so good at FS that he allowed us to play single-high more than just about anyone else in the league while also giving up some of the fewest explosive pass plays in the league. I was excited about the idea of Ramsey at CB2 (I never thought he was better than Porter) because I thought he'd give us a chance to play tighter coverage and give the edge rushes time to get home. Didn't really happen. I miss Butler (really I really, really miss LeBeau). I think the tension of having a LB/Blitz guy as DC with Tomlin as a secondary / coverage guy was a good combination. I assume we're going to let Austin walk this year (I think his contract is up). I hope we can bring in a bigger name / more creative DC. It was great when Flores was here.

6) We've got a whole thread on this, so I'll be brief. Warren / Gainwell has been better than Najee / Warren. Not by a ton, but better. That doesn't mean we don't need an upgrade at RB1. Because we do. Really disappointed that Johnson pretty much turned out to be a zero in year 1. Hopefully, he can show a lot more in year 2.

 

It is an opinion piece, but I was right about these things.

1. Last night backs up my claim because it demonstrates that Fautanu will never come close to matching the value of Mitchell. Both were positions of need, but Mitchell was and is the far better player. Last night was simply an illustration of just how limited Fautanu is. If he has to face a stud pass rusher, he fails. I think Rodgers helped mask the pass protection problems by throwing the ball so quickly all year, but Fautanu couldn't even give him that time last night.

They passed on an elite talent to take a middling player, which hurts the overall talent level of the team.

2. Pickens has better hands than Metcalf. He is also a younger player, with more time to come around. Metcalf is what he is, a head case who failed miserably with the season on the line last night.

3. Just because other teams have made the same mistake doesn't make keeping Watt an intelligent decision. It is laughable to think he has some big bounce-back season after two years of steady decline and breaking down with injuries.

4. I did acknowledge that Darnold is flawed, but he was still a better option than Rodgers, especially for 2026.

5. Maybe there was something we don't know about Fitzpatrick, but the trade was a disaster. Smith was terrible. Ramsey had some good moments, but that trade was a big reason why the safety position was an utter disaster for the Steelers this season. Maybe they had to trade Fitzpatrick, but trusting Thornhill as his replacement was inarguably stupid.

6. I knew you'd get a chuckle out of this one, but the team's lack of faith in Warren was apparent last night. The dumbest thing they could have possibly done was try to throw it all over the place against that pass rush, but they did it anyway because they don't have the trust to stick to the running game built around Warren.

 

Couldn’t disagree with point 1 more. You have to build the foundation first. That means you build the offensive and defensive lines first. After last nights performance im down on him as well, but overall hes had a solid first year.

 

Many people thought Darnold benefited from the Kevin O’Connell system along with having Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison as his targets. These are the same guys who made Josh Dobbs a serviceable QB for a few games. We weren’t the only one who whiffed.

 

Yeah, Mitchell is a good player but we knew they wanted to fix the trenches. Fautanu name has been hardly called this season he was a good pick still he just had a bad night.

 

Not sure why some think trading Watt would make it hard to convince fans we want to win.

Fans are booing the team with Watt on it.

Fans get over this stuff if we win more games. We really need to stop trying to hold onto our guys once they start declining just to keep fans happy.

 

It's like every move they make, they'll take one step forward and two steps back.

 

You have to build talent first. Focusing too much on position over talent is how you end up with a weaker overall talent base. Mitchell is an All-Pro. Fautanu a middling starter who has gotten his ass handed to him a few times this season, especially last night.

 

Mitchell might be a good player, but he was getting cooked by a no-name 49ers WR in that playoff game. You're overreacting to the bad playoff game for Fautanu he has been solid this season.

 

#4 Sam Darnold would fail with this offense
Be worse than he was at Carolina
Darnold is a product of his environment

 

You are assuming Fautanu is going to be a stud. Last night was strong evidence that your assumption is false. He is a long way from proving it. Mitchell is a stud. He has been one from day one in the NFL. It was already a mistake because the Eagles got two years of elite production from Mitchell while Fautanu missed all but one game as a rookie and ranged from middling to terrible in year two, including a truly awful performance in his first playoff game.

Pickens made one playoff mistake, so he is forever terrible, but Fautanu spent last night getting his ass handed to him and will still be a stud. Interesting logic.

Ramsey was far worse this season than Fitzpatrick was last year.

Sure, they coaches limit Warren's workload for ****s and giggles. lol