The Steelers should do the obvious Thursday and draft a much-needed defensive lineman with the 21st pick in the first round of the NFL Draft.
Save fixing quarterback till 2026. That draft is stronger at QB and, with any luck, the Steelers go 5-12 this coming season to get a better pick.
But it’s tough to wait till Christmas morning when you can get a shiny new toy now. Please, Mommy, can’t I open just one gift?
The Steelers continue to tread sewage with Aaron Rodgers. So if Colorado quarterback Shedeur Sanders drops to No. 21, the spit hits the spam.
Sanders must be good. Colorado retired his number, you know.
Tomlin on Sanders: “There’s a toughness there that doesn’t get talked about enough. There’s a competitive spirit there that doesn’t get talked about enough. The intangible qualities displayed on tape were impressive.”
Doesn’t get talked about enough? Unless his dad gets fitted for a ball gag, everything about Sanders gets talked about too much.
It’s scary to hear Tomlin trumpet Sanders’ intangibles. Kenny Pickett had a lot of those same intangibles, and Tomlin said so.
Turns out Pickett just couldn’t play quarterback.
You don’t need a tough quarterback. You need a precise quarterback with a good arm. Give me one of those and I don’t care if he drinks tea with an extended pinky and cries when he watches rom-coms.
You know what doesn’t get talked about enough? Sanders was once projected as the second pick overall, going to Cleveland. Now he might drop to the Steelers at 21. How’d that happen?
One NFL scout compared Sanders to Johnny Manziel. Ugh.
The talk around the NFL’s water cooler is that Tomlin would be the ideal coach for Sanders because papa Deion wouldn’t run his mouth as much.
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But Deion would. He can’t help himself.
Why does Tomlin have this reputation for reeling in nutbars?
Look at George Pickens. Head case. Underachiever.
People credit Tomlin for keeping Antonio Brown on the field and getting stats out of him. But the Steelers didn’t win enough during Brown’s tenure, and Brown hurt the culture so badly that it still hasn’t recovered.
JuJu Smith-Schuster behaved like a child and had just one good season with the Steelers.
LeGarrette Blount, James Harrison and Melvin Ingram railroaded their way off the Steelers via that “we want volunteers, not hostages” nonsense.
Tomlin doesn’t build culture. He has overseen the erosion of the Steelers’ culture. It died when the leaders that Tomlin inherited from Bill Cowher left.
The players like Tomlin, but that isn’t necessarily good.
Bottom line: The Steelers shouldn’t take Shedeur Sanders. He’s got an average arm, is only 6-foot-1, isn’t great in the pocket and has a limited ceiling.
We’re told he’s “pro ready.” Hey, just like Pickett!
There’s the notion that Tomlin talked up Sanders by way of distracting teams from whoever his real first-round target might be, perhaps Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart.
Tomlin is thought to have successfully employed that tactic in 2022, when he feigned interest in Liberty Biberty QB Malik Willis but took Pickett instead. But the ruse was unnecessary as no other team had even the vaguest notion of selecting Pickett in the first round.
Tomlin isn’t playing chess while others play checkers. Not hardly. He’d screw up Candy Land.
One of the silliest sidebars as the Steelers’ offseason trudges along is the notion that they have to win now because they owe that to aging veterans like Cam Heyward, T.J. Watt and Minkah Fitzpatrick. As ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky said on X, “The Steelers don’t have a year to punt it.”
Actually, the Steelers have several years to punt it.
They’re nowhere close to being a real contender, that’s with or without Rodgers, and that’s too bad for Heyward, Watt and Fitzpatrick.
Heyward, Watt and Fitzpatrick were on a team with a nailed-on Hall of Fame quarterback in Ben Roethlisberger, and they didn’t win. (Roethlisberger had won without them.)
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They were on a team that started 11-0 in 2020 but didn’t win. Lost five of their last six, including a playoff game at home to Cleveland, 48-37. Not a big night defensively.
The Steelers owe Heyward, Watt and Fitzpatrick nothing.
You shouldn’t be in win-now mode when you can’t win now.