Fun fact of the day

Right on Mac. Coaches often say teams need to have a short memory span. In the Steelers case, here's hoping for a long term memory span from 5 games ago and beyond. Catch some lightning in a bottle again or in the case of #14 and others, the friggin football.

 

Fun fact of the day #3.

Since the Steelers last appeared in the SB the Houston Texans have one more playoff win than the Steelers.

According to Tomlin, winning is our business...

 

The Steelers did a flat-out poor job of preparing for Ben's inevitable decline and retirement. Instead of shoring up the more basic foundational positions in the trenches as he aged, they opted to feed into the hope that he wouldn't hit the wall for another year or two - and the fool's gold that was the first eleven games of 2020 - and continued prioritizing skill positions in the early rounds of their drafts. This came to a head in the 2021 when they took Harris and Frieirmuth in the first two rounds while choosing to go with a third-round guard and fourth-round tackle to serve as rookie starters at C and LT.

Compounding the issue were some bad decisions surrounding value and player:

2018
1. Edmunds (terrible pick, no matter what Formerscribe says)
2. Washington
3a. Rudolph (understandable, but they took Dobbs in the 4th in 2017)
3b. Okorafor (never panned out, but at least they were thinking of the OL)

2019
1. Bush (bad pick that turned terrible because of the draft capital)
2. n/a (see above)
3a. Johnson
3b. Layne (poor pick here, Layne was a converted WR with only a single season at CB)
4. Snell, Jr.

2020
1. n/a (Fitzpatrick trade)
2. Claypool
3. Highsmith
4a. McFarland
4b. Dotson (mismanaged)

2021
1. Harris
2. Frieirmuth (passed on Creed Humphrey)
3. Green
4. Smith, Jr.

2022
1. Pickett
2. Pickens
3. Leal

 

a big part of that were colbert years. omar and especially weidl like big guys. free agency could be a useful tool for these guys since they have some NFL coaching already. we have enough youth right now on the o-line, i'd probably opt for a guard with some experience. not saying we couldn't draft some depth but as a starter. same with the D-line i think. we need some vet leadership on the backend as well hopefully. there are a lot of free agent corners this year. this could be good for getting one without breaking the bank. well hopefully.

 

Agree on Omar/Weidl - there was a reason I stopped at 2023.

There should be a good CB available in free agency, it'll just come down to how much they want to shell out. If they opt to replace Ogunjobi internally or through the draft it will free up $10M, so those concerned with the amount of money being spent of defense won't get too upset.