But offensive players they were, and you would have thought it was actually offensive, given the cries resounding from Steeler Nation’s collective throat.

I won’t deny this was surprising. But let’s begin with the “two picks” part, because this is the result of something even more surprising—a plethora of trades by the Steelers.

Most of them actually happened before the draft began—in fact, they happened during 2017:

1. 2018 4th round pick (128) traded to the 49ers in exchange for their 5th round pick (148) and Vance McDonald.
2. 2018 6th round pick (202) to Cleveland in exchange for Justin Gilbert.
3. Cleveland trades 202 back to Pittsburgh in exchange for 2019 7th round pick and Sammie Coates.
4. The Steelers traded the 2019 Cleveland pick to Tampa Bay in exchange for the Buc’s 2019 pick and J.J. Wilcox.
5. Ross Cockrell was traded to the NY Giants in exchange for NYG’s 7th round pick (220).
6. Martavis Bryant was traded to the Raiders in exchange for Oakland’s 3rd round pick (79). And finally:
7. The Steelers traded pick No. 79 and pick No. 220 (the ones from the Giants and the Raiders) to Seattle for the Seahawk’s 3rd round pick (No. 76.)

I don’t know about y’all, but I can’t remember the Steelers ever doing so much horse-trading. I suppose I’ll have to actually look this up at some point, but for the moment let’s take it as a given that this is an unusually frenetic level of trading for the Steelers.

So what amazing defensive player were the Steelers moving up three spots to nab? Let’s see who was available. (All players listed were graded higher by Lance Zierlein than the 5.66 grade of the player they did pick.):

DEs/OLBs: Rasheem Green (5.88), Sam Hubbard (5.82), Da’shawn Hand (5.73), Jalyn Holmes (5.71).

DTs: Maurice Hurst (5.94), Harrison Phillips (5.83).

S/CBs: Tarvarius Moore (5.83), Ronnie Harrison (5.82), Kyzir White (5.73) Armani Watts (5.67).

ILBs: Umm, none with grades over 5.6, which tends to reinforce the idea that the Steelers didn’t think much of the guys below the first four. In fact, if you put much stock in Zierlein’s grades, it seems like there was a lot of “reaching” for ILBs going on.

Okay, if the Steelers were going to go offense, I suppose it makes sense for them to move up to grab a great TE (this was a good class for them) or an offensive tackle (which they needed, more than they even knew at the time, given the very recent and possibly season-ending injury to Jerald Hawkins.) Or how about a promising RB so we could then kick that preening jackass L. Bell aut a tawn? (Hopefully you all realize I’m speaking for Steeler Nation rather than myself at this point…)

And of course they did none of those, picking quarterback Mason Rudolph, and outraging an awful lot of people.

This to me is a fascinating pick, because it’s more the flashpoint for this draft than even the (apparently) highly unsatisfactory first round pick, Terrell Edmunds. In the years to come, when one can actually judge such things, it is either going to be seen as pure genius or a stupid waste of a pick.

Mind you, there are those who still think Landry Jones was a stupid waste of a 4th round pick. A competent backup quarterback for the 115th pick in the draft seems reasonable, although there are plenty who would argue with the “competent” part of the previous statement. There are also plenty of people who think we should have Aaron Rodgers (or his equivalent) sitting on the bench in case Ben gets hurt.

And those people ought to be happy, because Mason Rudolph, although definitely grading below the five quarterbacks picked in front of him, had a first-round grade from many draftniks. (Bucky Brooks of nfl.com had him mocked at No. 12 to the Bills.)

But then there’s the Ed Bouchette school of thought—that picking Mason Rudolph this year means that the pick of Josh Dobbs last year was a wasted pick. [For the record, he was another 4th round pick, but a good bit nearer the end of the round (135) than where Landry Jones was chosen (115).]

Of course, Jones will be a free agent at the end of this season, but what does one do with Dobbs in the meantime? Unless one of the guys comes down with an IR-able injury, you’re going to have to cut somebody, or expose them to the waiver wire. So there’s certainly a point to Bouchette’s objection.

And before we look at Rudolph himself, there’s one other thing about the pick which has to be considered—it has apparently served as a complete rejuvenator for Ben Roethlisberger. Let’s look at the timeline:

February 2017: Roethlisberger is “considering retirement.”

February 2018: Roethlisberger would like to play “2-3 more years.”

April 2018: Roethlisberger expects to play “3-5 more years.”

Apparently the combination of the non-retention of Todd Haley and the drafting of a possible replacement has somehow triggered a surge of health and heartiness in Ben not seen for some time. Training camp should be even more fascinating than usual.

But let’s see what we actually have in this most controversial of draft picks. First off, because of the Steelers’ 2nd round pick, WR James Washington, it’s difficult not to consider them as somewhat of a package. After all, during the 2017 season they combined for 1,549 yards in receptions, with 15 touchdowns. Washington won the Biletnikoff Award for most outstanding receiver. Rudolph led the nation in passing yards (4,904), was fourth in touchdowns (37), finished seventh in the Heisman Trophy voting, and won the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award and the Sammy Baugh Trophy.

Apparently the two picked up right where they left off, connecting a number of times in rookie camp.

Of course, for this to be particularly meaningful, Rudolph would have to be on the field. How likely is this to happen?

Hopefully not very likely, at least this season. This would have to mean the following:

In training camp, Rudolph beats out Joshua Dobbs for the No. 3 spot. (I think we can take it that if this doesn’t happen the Steelers made an enormous mistake.)

This puts Rudolph on the roster. The next question is, can he beat out Landry Jones for the No. 2 spot? Part of the question is, can a guy straight out of college overcome Jones’ place in the Circle of Trust? While lots of people would say this ought to be easy, Jones has proven of late that he can perform under pressure, something that was an issue earlier in his NFL career. The only way to prove this is to be under actual pressure—in other words, in a situation in which the games matter.

If he should manage to do so and claim the No. 1 backup spot, then Roethlisberger would have to be unable to play—scarcely an ideal circumstance. However, if this should happen, at least Rudolph will have experience in this realm. He was expected to redshirt his freshman year, but injuries to the two QBs ahead of him thrust him onto the field early. His first game, against then-ranked No. 7 Baylor, was a loss, but he won a game against Oklahoma on the road the following week.

Of course Roethlisberger grabbed the starting job in just that fashion, and never gave it back. However, he was considered in the top three of a historically good quarterback class. The jury is still out on this one. But it is unfair to expect the same level of competence from Rudolph.

And although I’ve expended a great many words on this pick without yet discussing the actual player, there’s no way not to consider the issues that have made him so polarizing. Now let’s look at him strictly from the personal standpoint, which is always my preference anyhow. Is he the sort of young man we would like to be a Steeler?

He received CBSSports “highest grade for character” in their draft profile. They also noted “he has become an exemplary leader in his time at Oklahoma State.”

He certainly doesn’t lack in confidence in himself. He was disappointed to be drafted as late as the third round, not surprisingly, given that he was more than competitive on a national level in college with the guys who went in the first round. (The confidence issue has, I think, has been somewhat of a knock on Landry Jones.) Check out some of these quotes (from an article in buffalonews.com):

I’m very accurate with the ball. A lot of production, a lot of games, a lot of starts, durable….I’m very, very confident in my ability to pick up a new offense, a new system and command the huddle*…you ask any of my teammates, my coaches, they’ll tell you I command the huddle and I’m able to pick up on a lot very quickly.

*This isn’t just talk. It was favorably commented on after May OTAs:

His teammates have already been singing his praises of his command in the huddle, his presence on the field. Not comments that often come when it’s a rookie you are referring to.

More specifically, Marcus Tucker, who, as he is still technically a rookie, was at his third rookie minicamp, commented about Rudolph: “Certain guys just take command of the huddle, and I think he’s one of those guys that really grasps the togetherness of the offense.”

But this impressed me more, from the same Teresa Varley article on steelers.com:

The Steelers final OTA practice of the week was over, and the field was clear. Except for two players.

Standing out there, taking snap after snap, was rookie quarterback Mason Rudolph, the team’s third-round pick out of Oklahoma State.

Repetition after repetition he was working, until he reached that point where the comfort level was starting to come.

“We had some bad snaps,” said Rudolph of the day’s practice. “Bad center/quarterback exchange. It’s on both of us. At the end of teams, I wish we could have ended on a better note. We’ll get it right. We still have a lot of centers filtering through. We’ll get on the same page.”

The guy who knows Rudolph best, James Washington, commented: “He doesn’t like to be sloppy. If it’s sloppy, he’s going to redo it. No matter what. That’s something that will help him at this next level.”

Rudolph gives a great deal of credit to the guy he needs to beat out, Landry Jones:

We were filtering through a new center and he just gives me tips on hand placement, cadence and voice inflections and stuff like that. He’s been awesome.

But once again I’ve strayed into footbally kind of stuff. It’s more difficult to do in this circumstance, I fear. But perhaps there is a consolation for those who wanted him to be an ILB—growing up, Rudolph played “a lot of linebacker.”

In this video on nfl.com, part of a series titled “Path to the Draft,” the interviewer noted that his family was very athletic, and asked about this:

“With your father being a college linebacker, your brother being a linebacker at Clemson, did you take a lot of hits growing up, in the backyard?”

“I played a lot of linebacker growing up—I played a lot of defense. I enjoyed smashing my face in there and making the tackle. I wasn’t always the biggest, I wasn’t always the bulkiest, but I enjoyed the contact.”

His family has always been of central importance to Rudolph. OSU head coach Mike Gundy put it this way:

I said this three years ago, and I’ll say it again. I have three sons, and if they could grow up to be as squared away off the field as Mason is, it would make me comfortable as a dad. That’s the kind of kid he is.

His grandfather is a preacher (and was also the head of the Virginia chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Rudolph says:

I was brought up with a biblical background. With an idea that I could and should do what I could in my community. If I were to get a platform through football or something else, I didn’t want this just to be a gain for myself. I wanted to give back and impact people.

As a freshman, he met John Talley, a member of the Oklahoma Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and Talley set him up with a roto of community work, including speaking at elementary schools and various community efforts. Talley commented:

He’s worked with thousands of kids across Oklahoma and spoke to thousands of people at different events. I would guess in four years he’s been directly in front of 50,000 people. Every couple of years, you get someone who does a lot. Mason started off involved when he got here and stayed involved.

A supposed one-off connection with a tiny (4-year-old) brain cancer survivor turned into a relationship as Rudolph reached out to the family and remained involved. He has stayed close to the family, even after the boy relapsed and died. The boy’s mother Angela says “It is a bond that will never go away. I count him as part of my family. I feel like he’s a son.”

Finally, I am, as always, interested in the academic part of a player’s, you know, academic career, and Rudolph doesn’t disappoint. He made second team All-Academic last year. He was a marketing major at OSU, but considered declaring for the draft before his senior year. In the end he stayed, for two primary reasons—he wanted to “leave a legacy” and he wanted to graduate. Which I presume he did, although with the usual coyness, I can’t find anything other than he was “on track” to graduate with his class. Of course I love the fact that this was part of his consideration.

Persistence, consistency, and the willingness to go above and beyond, both on and off the field, seem to be part of Rudolph’s DNA. It’s certainly a good start. Welcome to the Steelers, Mr. Rudolph, and may you confound your critics and fulfill your potential.

Although Ivan has pretty much sewn up the “think globally” part of the site writing, I’m going to dip my toes back into those waters before continuing with my profiles of the new players, because several interesting bits of news have hit the stands.

But before I speak of things particular to the Steelers, I’m going to tackle a league-wide issue which, strangely, does not effect the Steelers, thank heavens—the increasing fuss over the “working” conditions of the NFL cheerleaders.

I’ve always been a fan of the Steelers eschewing cheerleaders, and given what I’m reading, I’m even gladder, although I can’t see the Rooneys treating “employees” with the same disdain as some of the teams.

In case you’re wondering why I have italicized “working” and “employees,” it is because many cheerleaders are not, apparently, paid in any significant way.

So what are they paid? According to an article in the Times Magazine Money section, published shortly before the Super Bowl, that’s because teams are extremely secretive about what they actually pay, presumably because it is embarrassingly small. The cheerleaders used to only receive a small compensation (around or less than $100) per game, and none for the required practices, but a couple of lawsuits have changed that for the better, a bit. Apparently. Because again, no one really knows. And given the vast number of necessary expenditures (makeup, stylists, and so on) which are not reimbursed, it seems likely that the net at the end of the season is close to or less than zero.

At least that is what this Guardian article is saying:

Since 2014, five other* NFL teams – the Raiders, Buccaneers, Bengals, Jets, Bills, and one NBA team, the Bucks – have faced lawsuits from their dancers, each alleging severe labor violations, and offering glances into the secretive and manipulative world of professional cheerleading: mandatory diets; forced beauty regimens paid out of pocket; countless hours of work for which the super-rich teams they cheered for refused to pay them.

*The first two teams mentioned in the article are subjects of a current lawsuit—the Miami Dolphins and the New Orleans Saints.

Here’s a bit more from the article:

Goodell’s belief in the importance of compensating cheerleaders (which he recently stated) had not been evident in previous years. His own signature appears on this 2009 contract between the Buffalo Bills and its broadcast affiliate, Citadel Broadcasting, in which it was stipulated that the team’s cheerleaders would not be paid for the eight-plus hours they spent working game days. They would also be subject to intensive control of their behavior and appearance by the Bills. They would additionally be subject to the rules and regulations of the NFL. They would not hold the league or the team responsible for any harm that befell them while working for the team. They would not be, as Goodell claimed in his Super Bowl 50 press conference, employees of the team. The NFL is also named as a defendant in the ongoing suit against the Bills.

A recent New York Times articleoutlined some of the demands in the “employee handbooks”:

Cheerleaders for the Carolina Panthers, known as the TopCats, must arrive at the stadium on game days at least five hours before kickoff. Body piercings and tattoos must be removed or covered. Water breaks can be taken only when the Panthers are on offense. TopCats must leave the stadium to change into their personal attire.

Baltimore Ravens cheerleaders were subject to regular weigh-ins and are expected to “maintain ideal body weight,” according to a handbook from 2009. The Cincinnati Ben-Gals were even more precise in recent years: Cheerleaders had to be within three pounds of their “ideal weight.”

Some cheerleaders must pay hundreds of dollars for their uniforms, yet are paid little more than minimum wage. Cheerleaders must sell raffle tickets and calendars and appear at charity events and golf tournaments, yet they receive none of the proceeds. Cheerleader handbooks, seven of which have been reviewed by The New York Times, include personal hygiene tips, like shaving techniques and the proper use of tampons. In some cases, wearing sweatpants in public is forbidden.

Other rules include exceedingly strict non-fraternization rules (one team stipulates that a dancer may not even make eye contact with a player,) and mandatory outside engagements.

As the Times stated:

Across the N.F.L., teams even try to place extensive controls on how cheerleaders conduct their lives outside work. This includes limiting their social media activity as well as the people they choose to date and socialize with. Restrictions are placed on their nail polish and jewelry.

But wait, it gets worse. An even more recentNew York Times article revealed the following:

When the Washington Redskins took their cheerleading squad to Costa Rica in 2013 for a calendar photo shoot, the first cause for concern among the cheerleaders came when Redskins officials collected their passports upon arrival at the resort, depriving them of their official identification.

For the photo shoot, at the adults-only Occidental Grand Papagayo resort on Culebra Bay, some of the cheerleaders said they were required to be topless, though the photographs used for the calendar would not show nudity. Others wore nothing but body paint. Given the resort’s secluded setting, such revealing poses would not have been a concern for the women — except that the Redskins had invited spectators.

A contingent of sponsors and FedExField suite holders — all men — were granted up-close access to the photo shoots.

After the shoot finished, some of the women were told to go change and accompany the men for the evening. Although nothing strictly illegal took place, if you will, this still sounds uncomfortably like human trafficking to me.

The team has probably changed its policies, now that this has come out, or is in the process of doing so. But the whole thing is shameful, and I’m even more proud to be a Steelers fan.

And speaking of the Steelers, on to the actual Steelers news.

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first

1) Le’Veon Bell has released another rap track. It is subtly titled “Target” and in it he takes a pot shot at pretty much everything connected with the Steelers, including their fans. Tim Benz of the Trib has a “review” of the track, with rebuttals of essentially every sentiment expressed, and with a bonus video of Terry Bradshaw singing “Jambalaya.” He begins:

As you might have read in this space in early April, Bell has made himself a victim before. He posted a tweet that read: “It’s so hard to be a hero in a city that tries to paint you out to be a villain.”

His latest song is a longer version of that same thought.

“I’m being made into a target. I’m being looked at as a bad guy, and it’s everybody else’s fault but mine.”

Here’s the actual lead-in to the song (aside from shooting noises and so on:)

I don’t know what they call it out here

This hatin’ and talkin,’ I guess that makes me a target

I see that they wanna judge me by what goes in my wallet

I ball like I’m Ben Wallace, I can’t do a thing about it, oh

I would like to try my hand at a rebuttal, but Ima gonna rhyme mine for real (or is that “mines?”)

I don’t know what they call it out there

But here in the real world it don’t sound fair.

A man gettin’ two times the goin’ rate

And whinin’ ’bout how it ain’t triple the gate.

Hee

Oh

Bang

(And other obligatory sounds and beats.)

I could go on but you get the idea. Bell is in the unfortunate position of being a running back, and he’s correct that he “can’t do a thing about it, oh.” Storytime, boys and girls.

Many of you know that in my former life I was a professional musician. Not a rapper or any other sort of music that makes you actual money, but a classical musician. I’m married to an engineer/scientist/whatever you want to call a research metallurgist.

Some years ago I was writing grant proposals for two small non-profits I was involved with. This was in the days before the internet. All proposals had to be printed out, (and they were typically 15-20 pages long), xeroxed (10 copies were required of each, I think it was), collated and stapled, and submitted before the deadline. This was in New Mexico, where money for such things was very slim.

As it happened, the two principal funders had application deadlines a week apart one year, so on the day I got the last of the four proposals out to the door I was pretty shattered. My husband, who had recently gotten into the proposal business for his employer, came home and asked why I was so frazzled. I explained the situation, and he asked me how much money I thought I was going to get out of these proposals, assuming they were funded (because they never gave you as much as you asked for.) I allowed as how I might get a total of around five or six thousand dollars between the four proposals. He then said “Really? It’s not worth my time to make a phone call for under $100,000.” It is possible I did not receive this news well.

But in the end I was perfectly aware that, fair or not, the world values what he does more than what I do. Vastly more, actually. Is it reasonable that the value of one of his current research grants probably greatly exceeds the sum total of all the money I ever raised via proposal writing over a career spanning more than thirty years? Depends on who you ask.

If I had wanted to make a lot of money at what I did, I probably would have chosen a different field. If Le’Veon Bell was so concerned about maximizing his NFL income, perhaps he should have been something other than a running back. Like, say, a quarterback. Just a thought.

Am I in the crowd that says they are all being paid ridiculous sums of money? No. I don’t propose to go out there and let large men hit me for a living, and if they can make lots of money doing that, more power to them. And it is worth remembering that most of them will have medical issues after they play which may even prevent them from working in some other field after they finish their NFL career. But to decide you should be paid not just more but multiples of more than anyone else at your position has ever made seems unrealistic to me. Sorry, Lev, not tryin’ to be a hater, just pragmatic. If you are a target, you put it squarely on your own back.

2) There’s more bad news—a bit more seriously bad, especially for the guys involved. Both Jerald Hawkins and Jake McGee went down with what look to be pretty serious injuries yesterday. McGee’s is possibly an Achilles, and while the only word on Hawkins was that it was a knee injury, other players reported that he was screaming with pain, which doesn’t sound very promising. Anything that makes a football player scream must be pretty intense. (It has just been reported to be a torn quad.) As Ivan discussed in Wednesday’s post, injuries are always the wild card. They can strike at any time. Let’s hope these young men dodged a bullet—not Le’Veon’s sort of bullet, but a real one…

And finally, the fun news. The first bit is the new “throwbacks”—they’re terrific. The picture heading the post is Ju-Ju (of course) modeling it for the unveiling. Good look for both of them…

As far as actual football stuff, there’s this as well. One of the players I was hoping the Steelers would take in the late rounds of the draft, and many had mocked to the Steelers, was the rugby player from Australia. They didn’t draft him, but they did get an English rugby player instead. There was a nice article about him in the Trib a few days ago, and I like the sound of him. But I especially like the part where the Steelers get a roster exemption for him because he is part of the International Pathways program. So if they think he has any promise at all, they can keep him and consequently get a 54th roster spot. Sounds like a win/win to me!

Christian Scotland-Williamson (what a great name, too, although I’m not sure Dave Barry would like it for a band) also sounds like a winner. And, ironically, his first exposure to American football was the 2008 Super Bowl, and consequently he started following the Steelers. So he thinks it is pretty surreal that he ended up in Pittsburgh.

My favorite quote from the article was as follows:

From the player’s point of view, there is always that rugby thing to fall back, right?…Scotland-Williamson, though, is not allowing himself to think that way.

“That’s the thing: You can’t dip your toe into this,” he said of football. “I have left rugby behind. You can’t come in to such a competitive environment thinking you are not going to succeed because you might as well not do it.

I wouldn’t have gotten on the plane if I didn’t think I could be a genuine NFL player.”

Welcome to Pittsburgh, Mr. Scotland-Williamson. We look forward to watching your development, and sincerely hope you will indeed become a genuine NFL player.

Although if you do, we may have to run a nickname contest, because my carpal tunnel is going to kick up if I have to type “Scotland-Williamson” too often. Which would be a great problem to have!

By Ivan Cole

If you are interested enough, the entire football year can be endlessly intriguing. As we move into the second week of OTAs it is still far too early to make much sense of where the Steelers stand in relation to securing that seventh championship this season, but enough of the puzzle pieces are in place to allow for some educated speculation.

Injuries and other handicaps

In past seasons the team often struggled with a high volume of injuries. As Head Coach Mike Tomlin has said, the injury rate in the National Football League is 100 percent, therefore it has been tempting to throw one’s hands in the air and declare that it is all just a matter of luck as to how things work out.

A few years ago, Art Rooney II threw the gauntlet down and declared the organization’s intention to get a better handle on the situation. It sounded at the time like Owner Speak, putting an optimistic face on a problem that was really beyond the capacity to influence.

However, since then, whether by luck or other means, the number of injuries has come down. Unfortunately, although only one player missed the entire 2017 campaign due to injury, the timing and severity of those that did occur were sufficient to be both a factor in the Steelers’ ultimate failure last year and a specter haunting the team building process for the coming season.

The headliner is Ryan Shazier, not only because the impact of his loss to last season’s efforts, but because of the challenge in replacing him going forward, in that he will not be returning in the foreseeable future, if ever. The dramatic and catastrophic nature of Shazier’s loss served to help mask other significant losses.

Many forget that Tyler Matakevich, who replaced Shazier after he was injured, also went down later in the same contest against the Bengals, and although he never missed a game he was unable to play at the inside linebacker position for the rest of the season. Similar issues reportedly affected Javon Hargrave, and haunted Mike Mitchell throughout his Steelers career. Antonio Brown’s loss was relatively brief but could not have been more ill-timed. Vance McDonald struggled throughout the year. When he arrived Cameron Sutton impressed, but he missed a lot of time. Keion Adams lost the entire season. Eli Rodgers’ loss came too late to materially affect last season but may likely influence events this year.

Then there is the “other handicaps” category. Here I am speaking to those who have lost time due to non-football offenses. We have to wonder if the team would have so easily parted ways with such a gifted talent as Martavis Bryant, even considering his impending contract situation, were it not for his at-risk status due to substance abuse issues. His loss of an entire season due to suspension was no different in impact than if he had suffered an injury, and he is one slip-up from being as unavailable as Shazier. (Am I the only one concerned with him joining a team that is on its way to Vegas with only Jon Gruden standing between him and the Devil?)

Similarly, would Le’Veon Bell have more negotiating leverage were it not for the combination of his legitimate injury history and “other handicaps”?

Then there is Marcus Gilbert. Injury time plus a suspension for Performance Enhancing Drugs may have proven more problematic for the team in 2017 were it not for the heroic performance of the now departed, swiss-army-knife Chris Hubbard. It remains to be seen whether the under the radar acquisition of Chukwuma Okorafor proves to be the most impactful development from the third round of this year’s draft.

As mentioned in this space many times before, injuries may rarely make or break a season in and of themselves, but they can make matters so much more difficult. History also teaches us that it is not too early to begin keeping track of these things. A seemingly innocuous soft tissue injury suffered in OTAs or minicamp may linger long enough to retard progress or derail a career. Senquez Golson anyone?

Distractions:

1. Noise

These are all the artificially created and inflated storylines that keeps sports media types and fandom busy and allegedly engaged during those times of the football year characterized by low levels of newsworthy activity. Thankfully, we are obviously past the peak of mock drafts, instant evaluations of the actual draft, and player movement. In Pittsburgh we have been entertained for a time by the Quarterback Chronicles, which will undoubtably flair up again in training camp. In the meantime, the best bet is to trot out Le’Veon Bell and his contract situation, whereupon they will proceed to whip that nag to death.

2. Actual Distractions

These are legitimate, non-football concerns as likely as to show up in the Metro section of the newspaper as the Sports page. The best recent example involved Todd Haley. Workplace issues such as those involving James Harrison can also slip into the mix. All things considered, from where I sit there has appeared to be something of a lull in these sorts of things during the Tomlin Era. Three possibilities why that might be so:

• Luck. For whatever reason, there has been something of a lull in team related bad acting. This could change at any moment.
• Deft situation management. Apparently, for example, there were areas of conflict involving Haley and players or other staff that those within the Steeler Nation bubble either did not recognize, or conspiratorially ignored.
• Legitimate improvement of the culture. All of Rebecca’s Character Accounts reports may have yielded some sort of harvest. From what we have seen, character is part of the equation for determining who belongs in this Steelers organization.

Global Issues

There are larger concerns, some that are merely league or industrywide, others are societal that will affect the team. Three are in play this year, with two almost certain to threaten how the team navigates the season.

1. Player safety.

As we have been saying for years, this isn’t going away. Specifically, there have been some rule changes involving player contact whose impact won’t be clear until the pads go on and the physical competition begins.

2. Gambling.

Its unclear what the ramifications of this will be immediately.

3. The Anthem.

The culture wars and the Lose/Lose energy that it brings now has a solid outpost in the NFL. This has the potential of bringing a little of everything to the forefront: political/ideological polarization, racial animus, questionable labor practices, hypocrisy, greed, in short many of those things that people come to sports entertainment to escape. It is almost a certainty that the league will lose fan support from all sides of the issue—competing boycotts if you will.

Want a little insight with a decidedly Steelers spin? Here’s a piece by the Washington Post’s Sally Jenkins featuring Rocky Bleier:

The Team

Surpluses and shortages. The truth of the matter is while football in shorts is a big step up from nothing, that’s not to say that much that is discernible or noteworthy is going on. However, conditions that drive the internal competition that will shape this team are firming up some.

On offense the quarterbacks and running backs are in surplus, wide receivers in shortage, and the offensive line and tight ends more in equilibrium. The key in making these determinations is whether the competition is at the top or bottom of the depth chart.

On defense the secondary is in surplus, the linebackers in shortage and the defensive line in relative equilibrium.

Don’t misconstrue any of this to mean that management is standing pat on player acquisition and movement. All one has to do is contemplate the circumstances through which the following players came to the team: Alejandro Villanueva, Vance McDonald, Joe Haden, Chris Boswell and Mike Hilton.

Key players (those who need to hold service or take a step up) heading into and throughout the summer:

TE Vance McDonald, WR James Washington, RB James Connor, DE Stephon Tuitt, DT Javon Hargrave, LB Tyler Matakevich, LB Bud Dupree, S Sean Davis, and CB Cam Sutton.

Wild cards (those who bring a little—or a lot—more than expected):

LB Keion Adams, LB Anthony Chickillo, LB T. J. Watt, DE L.T. Walton, S Terrell Edmunds, S Marcus Allen, DB Brian Allen, QB Joshua Dobbs, WR Marcus Tucker, LB Matthew Thomas, TE Christian Scotland-Williamson, RB Jaylen Samuels, WR Justin Hunter, WR Quadree Henderson, and TE Xavier Grimble.

On the bubble (stepping up or out):

OT Jerald Hawkins, DT Dan McCullers, DB Coty Sensabaugh, and RB Fitz Toussaint.

This will be amended as necessary throughout the summer.

Thanks for your always thought-provoking words. In case you’re wondering, that’s my hand in the photo, wearing Bob Labriola’s Super Bowl ring, or, I suppose, one of them. (The staff get them too.) This was taken at a “Ladies Night Out” event at Heinz Field, back in 2011.

And my apologies to Ivan. This was supposed to go up on Tuesday, and in fact WordPress said it was published, but I just noticed it didn’t actually happen. Perhaps my internet, which is varying between flaky and nonexistent, is to blame. 

I won’t repeat my rather ambling preamble to the first post—feel free to read it if you’ve got a cup of coffee and some extra time. Let’s get right to it:

There was fairly general agreement among those writing about the Steelers’ likely draft, at least among those who are actually knowledgeable about the Steelers, that the Steelers would take a wide receiver at some point, maybe even as high as the 2nd or 3rd round. While it wasn’t exactly a major point of need, there were a couple of factors driving it—first, Martavis Bryant wouldn’t be with the team in 2019, and second, the Steelers like to do that.

Let’s look at the first point. By the time I was doing my reading, everyone believed Kevin Colbert’s statement that the Steelers were not going to trade Martavis Bryant. The unspoken reason behind that, and one which all sensible people believed, was that no one was going to offer enough to make it worthwhile for the Steelers, despite the fact that Bryant would undoubtedly be gone a year later, one way or the other. There were several possibilities:

1. He would have a terrific 2018 season, and thus price himself out of the Steelers’ range
2. He would have an annoying 2018 season, with uneven production punctuated by more pouting and unfortunate tweets, in which case someone else might want him, but the Steelers certainly wouldn’t, or
3. He would do something stupid and get himself suspended indefinitely, in which case he might not even be available to the Steelers in 2018.

Of course, any other team could make the same assessment and come to the same conclusions, which is why Colbert et al assumed they wouldn’t get enough offered for Bryant to make it worth it to trade him.

You could take the view that the most likely scenario was No. 2, and you would be well rid of him for a bag of balls, or however it was people were describing the Santonio Holmes trade back in 2010. Of course, we all know what that “bag of balls” (5th round pick from the Jets) turned into—Bryant McFadden and Antonio Brown. McFadden was serviceable in 2010. Brown turned out relatively well, or so I hear.

But given the Steelers’ many needs and limited picks (including the lack of even one in the 4th round) it isn’t difficult to see why the Steelers came to the conclusion they were better off getting what they could out of Bryant this coming season, and addressing the WR need in the 2019 draft if need be.

Instead, they found someone desperate enough (I guess that’s what it was) to risk a 3rd round pick on Bryant—and a relatively high 3rd at that—in the Raiders. And suddenly the need for another receiver moved way up the priority list.

I don’t know about you, but I love the ideas the Steelers have for the revamped defense. However, I’m not sure it is going to be effective sufficiently early in the season to prevent a lot of bleeding of points from the defense. I’m really hoping I’ll be wrong. I’m hoping that Tuitt and Hargrave were both injured enough to greatly reduce their effectiveness, and they will be back at full strength this year. This will in turn reduce the pressure to some degree on the secondary and give the linebackers a better working environment, if you will. But I can just as easily see other stuff going wrong. T.J. Watt gets injured—or any of the defensive linemen, for that matter. Bud Dupree continues to not impress. The hybrid ILB/safety core struggles. The corners struggle. So even if this new scheme is effective, there are lots of ways it could go wrong.

Which brings us back to our multi-million dollar offense. An awful lot of the money on this team is invested in them, and they need to play like it.

Hence the need for a stud third receiver. Enter James Washington.

But once again I’ve let myself get sucked into footbally matters. Let’s look at Mr. Washington from a personal perspective. I didn’t cover him in my mocks, as there were several other receivers I considered to be more handsome. I’m still pining a bit for Equanimeous St. Brown, the tri-lingual threat, but at least he went to Green Bay and not to an AFC North team.

But Washington turns out to have unexpected depths. He was born in Abilene, Texas, although his family lives in Stamford now. Not Stanford—Stamford, Texas, where they own a ranch. And this life is one Washington has chosen for his future, even assuming he has a successful NFL career. (We hope you do too, James, for what it’s worth : )

An article on the OSU Athletics site shows just what he gave up for that. Basically, he had three choices—1) declare for the draft as a junior, which would mean deferring his agribusiness major (with extra studies in ranch management) until after his NFL career, 2) change his major to University Studies and graduate in December of 2017, which would allow him to focus on football and draft prep, or 3) what he actually did.

Which was to take a 17-hour course load in the fall, while playing football, and a nine hour course load in the spring while preparing for the Combine. All of the courses were high-level, intensive courses required to complete his major. As he said:

I worked hard all the way to this point. Why not work a little harder to get what I want?

That was a hard time, I’ll tell you that. But I had a bunch of people that were by my side here that helped me get through it.

As he noted in an interview for Bleacher Report:

I wanted to be the first in my family to get a college degree. It’s a promise I made to my mom a long time ago, back when I was in middle school. It really wasn’t hard to come back. This is something I wanted to do.

Quite impressive, I think. I love to see a young man who can look squarely at his life after football, even while working towards an NFL career. And he is young—he turned 22 a few weeks before the draft. While that’s rather older than Terrell Edmunds’ brother (who is still 19), in life terms it’s awfully young.

And the “hard time” doesn’t seem to have hurt his draft chances any. After the Combine there were a lot of scouts giving him a first-round grade. As an aside, this makes a pretty impressive set of picks—a receiver with a possible first-round grade at the end of the second, paired with his quarterback, who also had a first-round grade, in the middle of the third. Only time will tell whether this is as impressive as it seems, but as we all know, getting at least a potential “franchise” quarterback in the third round is nothing to sneeze at.

How about character? We can already ascertain something about his character from the preceding. He’s not afraid to delay gratification, he’s not afraid of hard work, he takes the long view, and he keeps his promises. But there’s more—much more.

The Bleacher Report article linked above doesn’t have much to say about Washington’s prowess on the field. That speaks for itself. It is more about who he is and where he’s from. I highly recommend reading the whole article. I will just quote this bit, in which the author talks about Washington’s elder cousins:

They talk about the many photos James took as child while on successful sports teams and the fact that he never stood in front despite always being the star. In many ways, this was where he was more comfortable.

As Washington said about the spotlight:

Let it come to you. And if and when it comes, then share it with the people around you. Never draw attention to yourself. When you do that, you show your character.

To return to his cousins:

They talk about the time he still spends at the church and with the elderly, bringing them Christmas gifts when he gets a few moments away from his football life.

“He doesn’t like making a big deal out of it,” Titania says. “But it’s something he’s always done.

It sounds to me as if we’ve gotten another super high character gem in the second round. Sweet. And it would seem the Steelers didn’t sacrifice anything on-field to do so.

In an article written in March for Newsok.com, the author contends that Washington is the best receiver in the 2018 draft, and part of her reasoning was character based. After listing the tops receivers available in the draft, she says:

[N]one is any better than Washington.

It’s because of his skills, yes. His athleticism, of course. But it’s also his personality — this guy runs completely counter to the selfish, flashy, needy stereotype that often sticks to receivers.

“Teams have asked me, ‘Are you really a receiver? Most receivers, they’re the diva type,’” Washington said, then shrugged. “I’m like, ‘I’ve put plenty of stuff on film. You know my character. When I talk to you, that’s who I am.’

“Never gonna change.”

She talked about his decision to stay in Stillwater and work out with the OSU staff prior to the Combine and Pro Day rather than go to one of the big programs to train.

Of course, he couldn’t go to one of the big programs and also continue his course work. But that speaks to two things—his determination to see his degree through and his confidence in himself and the college staff who got him there.

The author finished up with the following, which was really interesting to me, since she didn’t mention any other teams, and the site is, naturally, based in Oklahoma:

Washington is a big reason why the Pittsburgh Steelers sent half a dozen representatives, including head coach Mike Tomlin and general manager Kevin Colbert, to OSU’s pro day. Washington and Cowboy safety Tre Flowers had dinner with some of them Wednesday night.

Pittsburgh has the No. 28 pick in the draft.

If the Steelers want Washington, they best trade up.

Hoo-wee! as they might say in Oklahoma. Can you imagine the turmoil which would have erupted in our fair city had the Steelers not only not taken a defensive player, but traded up and then not taken an ILB but a wide receiver? Holy mackerel! There would be more than couches burning on the streets of Oakland, I suspect! (That is Oakland as in the part of Pittsburgh in which Pitt resides. When there is great excitement of one sort or another in the city, household furnishings which are probably destined for the landfill at the end of the year anyhow are sometimes set aflame in the student quarter…)

Well, I think we’ve established that Washington is, at least so far, the anti-Bryant. This should make for a refreshing change in the wide receivers room and the Twitterverse.

Let me just say I wish Bryant all the best in California and hope he plays well, unless he should happen to play the Steelers. But I think Ben, Antonio and Le’Veon have the drama component of the team pretty well sewn up, and Bryant was surplus to requirements.

So the final question—Washington clearly didn’t pass Momma’s initial eye test. But honestly, he’s growing on me by the moment. And after all, there is nothing more beautiful than a receiver running into the end zone.

And if he and Ben can develop a relationship anything like that he had with Mason Rudolph, all I can say is, watch out, NFL. We’ll see your 28 points and raise you a few more touchdowns…

Last year Momma had the thrill of several of her selections being taken by the Steelers, including first-round pick T.J. Watt. That appears to have been a slam-dunk for both Momma and the Steelers. This year, on the other hand, the Steelers took none of Momma’s picks, even when they coincided with the guys the “experts” said they would likely take. Not a single one.

And speaking of the “experts,” do check out Steel Curtain Rising, Hombre de Acero’s site, as he’s getting ready to post his assessment of the draft—the 2013 draft, that is. As Hombre says, if Chuck Noll thought you needed five years to properly assess a draft class, that’s good enough for him. It should be pretty hilarious, at least if you prefer sticking one to the draft experts above having, you know, really good players… It isn’t up yet as I write this, but is going up soon.

But to return to this year’s draft, one which has already been judged with a fine-toothed comb, if you will pardon the mangled metaphor, I’m going to discuss over the coming weeks the young men the Steelers saw fit to pick, even after they surely adjusted their draft board after reading my mocks. I’m going to do it a bit differently this year, though, because this draft is a bit of an outlier.

Or is it? Perhaps it is a straw which shows the way the wind blows. After all, the two things everybody knew going into this draft were 1) Kevin Colbert’s comment about drafting a quarterback if one they liked remained at a spot they liked was “smoke and mirrors,” to quote long-time Steelers beat writer Ed Bouchette, (we will get into the whys and wherefores when I cover Mason Rudolph) and 2) the top priorities going into this draft were all on defense, and they would be addressed long before any offensive needs were considered. And of course the first round pick was a defensive player (but not the right one, as everyone has been eager to point out) but it wasn’t until Round 5 that another defensive player was taken.

The actual draft occurred in the small hours of the morning here in France. So when I awoke the next day and saw that Justin Reid was still available and the Steelers had picked a safety but he wasn’t Justin Reid and in fact was one I hadn’t even looked at because no one was mocking him to the Steelers (okay, maybe in the 3rd round,) I was just as shocked as everyone else. And to be quite honest with you, he probably wouldn’t have made the cut for my draft anyhow, given how superficial a look I take at these guys initially just to narrow the field a bit. After all, I eliminated Quadree Henderson from contention based simply on his Twitter motto or whatever you call the phrase next to the picture.

Which I admit is no more admirable than the sports radio caller who complained last spring about T.J. Watt because his butt was too small. (I kid you not. He said that Watt clearly wasn’t a good athlete because he had a small butt. There’s an article about it on this site, somewhere during last springs’ posts, because you can imagine that I would want to write about that.)

But allow me to rein myself in here. I’m wandering even more than usual today. To return to the comment about a “straw which shows the way the wind blows,” the idea that the Steelers are in their 3-4 base about a third of the time now, and that sub-package football often blurs the distinction between defensive backs and linebackers anyhow has been tossed around quite a bit. But Tim Benz of the Trib wrote an article the other day that goes beyond that. He compares this to the sea change that took place when the 3-4 defense was developed:

[B]ack in the early 90s, the Steelers pioneered the movement of signing and drafting players as outside linebackers in their 3-4 defensive scheme who were previously ends in a 4-3 scheme.

Kevin Greene was one in free agency. Jason Gildon and Joey Porter were two in the draft.

Largely, the job is the same. The title of the occupation is just different. As a 4-3 end or a 3-4 outside linebacker you go get the other team’s quarterback.

So is what the Steelers are doing now with their safety-stocked defense really all that different?

Because it feels like it is being met with skepticism, though the premise is the same. Does it matter if a player is called a linebacker or a safety if he performs the same duties regardless of the label on the back of the football card?

Basically, the Steelers are playing Moneyball, as I see it. Safeties have been a market inefficiency, being somewhat undervalued. In the meantime, the job description for an inside linebacker (or at least some of them) has changed. How long have people been saying Ryan Shazier should be moved to safety? And how obvious was it that the whole defense was crafted around his skill set in the games after he went down?

Now I suppose one could fault the Steelers that there was no one in line behind him, especially given that his style of play lends itself to injury even more than the usual player (Breaking update—the injury rate in the NFL is 100%, according to Mike Tomlin.) But it’s pretty difficult to keep elite athletes hanging out on the bench, and Shazier was a first-round pick for a reason (although many people thought he was overdrafted, in a nice parallel to this year’s draft.)

So after that extremely long preamble, let’s take a look at Edmunds. I’m not going to focus on the footbally stuff, because honestly that doesn’t matter so much. What he did in college is past and gone, and as we saw from Jarvis Jones, a highly productive college career doesn’t necessarily translate particularly well into the NFL. But why is that?

One of the mysteries of the football universe is the attempt to determine how much it matters which team drafts any given player. Obviously some teams are better at player development than others, although I believe you could even call that into question. But, for instance, why is Cleveland a black hole for quarterbacks (and will this continue to be true going forward?) or why do the Steelers appear to have a magic touch for wide receivers but not for cornerbacks, or how can the Lions have a really excellent quarterback and not seem to win very much anyhow? There appears to be a factor no one has managed to calculate that is a combination of the player, the coaches, the team, and perhaps even the city itself.

One has to wonder if Jarvis Jones would have done better on a team where he didn’t have to sit behind James Harrison. I believe this question also occurred to the Steelers’ brain trust, which is why Keith Butler is now the defensive coordinator. But there is no way to the repeat the experiment. Nor does the fact that Jones didn’t do anything after leaving Pittsburgh necessarily mean anything. Perhaps the development window was lost. And it is interesting that in Jones’ case the Steelers went against their well-known preference to take younger players. Perhaps this is part of the reason—the sooner they are in the system (particularly, I think, on defense) the better. Jones was 23 when drafted and turned 24 that October. Just a thought…

One thing we know for sure about Terrell Edmunds—if he sits on the bench this year, it will either be because of injury or because all those scouts who had a third-round grade on him were right, and had in fact overvalued him in the third round. Because if we know anything to be true, we know that Edmunds needs to be the player the Steelers thought they were getting. There is an enormous hole in the middle of the Steelers’ defense, and if Edmunds (and/or Marcus Allen, or Brian Allen, or ?) doesn’t have a substantial role in filling it, it’s difficult to see how it is going to be filled at all, no disrespect to Jon Bostic or anything.

But however Edmunds turns out as a football player, and whether he is really the player the Steelers thought they were getting, on a personal level he appears to be a gem. Yes, he comes from a football family. Both his brothers are now in the NFL as well, as his younger and taller brother was drafted ahead of him and his older brother is a running back for the Saints. His dad played for the Seahawks and Dolphins. But in a lovely article by Kevin Gorman of the Trib, his mom says that they didn’t care what the boys chose to do, just that they focused on whatever they chose and did it well. “Whatever you do today is going to prepare you for tomorrow. So you can’t think, I’m going to be a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, a manager, an NFL player, and you don’t put the work in,” she said in a video. She emphasized that one of the most important things she taught her boys was the golden rule—to treat others as you want to be treated.

She sounds like she would make a great coach. She said that motherhood is one of the toughest jobs there is, because you can’t be their friend. You have to make them accountable for their actions, and if they do something wrong you have to communicate that to them and let them know why it was wrong and why they should not do it, rather than allow them to justify their actions to themselves.

Apparently Felicia Edmunds (whose nickname is Cookie) made quite an impression on Mike Tomlin. He and Kevin Colbert took Edmunds and his parents to dinner, and she spent the evening peppering him with questions. He was asked in his first press conference as a Steelers “what sort of questions did his mother ask Tomlin and Colbert at the dinner?” After hesitating a moment, Edmunds laughed and said “What kind of questions did she not ask?”

And in the Kevin Gorman article Edmunds admitted he was “sort of a mama’s boy.” You all know I like that in a man—mainly that he is man enough to admit it. And honestly I think there is a lot to be said for a player having a strong family background—it just means one less thing to overcome.

And I have to note one other thing about his family—they have now fostered 21 children, and currently have three boys, ages 16, 12, and 11. I have nothing but admiration for people willing to take on such a daunting task. And I suspect that one of the primary things you learn from foster brothers and sisters is gratitude for a good home life.

In an interview with the New York Post, moments after he was drafted, Edmunds said:

“I honestly don’t know how I’m doing this interview right now because I’m so filled up with joy, first for my brother,” Terrell Edmunds said. “I was so excited for him. … Then hearing my name called, I can’t speak enough for my family.”

But the best part of the interview comes later:

Tremaine was making the media rounds at AT&T Stadium when he heard his brother get drafted.

“Let’s go, man, that’s my brother!” Tremaine shouted.

Terrell said he was in the bathroom when he got the phone call. He thought it was a friend prank calling him. Then he saw the number and answered.

“I ran out of the bathroom, my pants unzipped and belt undone, I ran to my parents and I couldn’t even tell them what was going on,” Terrell said. “I was just pointing to my phone, so excited and so ready.”

Maybe not entirely ready…

And to continue for a moment on the subject of family, I watched a post-practice interview from last fall in which Edmunds was asked what it was like playing with his brother on the same defense. After being told it was “a blessing” the reporters started digging. One asked whether there was ever a situation where one messed up, created a problem for the other, and the victim gave the instigator a hard time. Edmunds smiled and said no, there was never anything like that. He said that both of them messed up from time to time, and they would watch tape together to try to learn from it. And so on. One had the impression of a close and easy relationship between the brothers, and a great level of maturity in Edmunds.

And in his interview with Dale Lolley for the Steelers Radio Network, a day after he was drafted, Edmunds described family pick-up football games, which they called “Pick up and die.” He said you either came out of those games as a hard-nosed football player or as somebody who wanted nothing to do with football.

As is usually the case with Lolley, he brought out some interesting things. One rather unexpected one Lolley brought up was that in the midst of the 2017 season, when Virginia Tech had one of the top defenses in the league, their coach singled out Terrell Edmunds as the best player on the defense. Lolley asked him whether he considered himself the leader of the defense, and Edmunds replied that he considered himself one of the leaders.

Lolley mentioned that part of the reason the Steelers drafted him was that they were impressed with his football acumen, and asked Edmunds if he considered himself a student of the game. Edmunds agreed, and noted that depending on the circumstances, he might play either free or strong safety or even corner (and of course he was switched from corner to safety in 2017.) Not to mention some of what Edmunds called “nickel linebacker.”

But I’m slipping back into footbally talk. Enough of that! Speaking of “student”, after considerable searching I was able to find out Terrell graduated from Virginia Tech in December with a degree in multimedia journalism. Perhaps he will have a better idea how to use social media than some of the incumbent meatheads. I discovered the “graduation” part from a tweet Edmunds put out two days before graduation. I was interested to note one of the comments, from a fellow student, who said in effect “you graduated while doing sports. I barely graduated while doing partying. Congratulations.”

And interestingly, all three boys skipped a grade in school. Edmunds was asked at his first conference for the Steelers about that, and the reason was they moved from a private school to public school and had to take a placement test, and all three of them placed a year ahead. Also encouraging…

And although Edmunds described his mom as the “talker” of the family, he noted that his father told the brothers that “nothing comes easy, nothing is given to you.” Edmunds expressed his readiness to start from scratch and learn to be a pro. While he said that the three brothers would talk from time to time about all making the NFL, their father cautioned them that it wasn’t a given, and that in fact they didn’t have to do football at all. The only expectation was that whatever they chose, they give it their all.

Which must have been tough in high school, because all three boys also ran track and played basketball.

Mama’s boy, hard worker, good communicator, accomplished athlete—only the future will tell for sure, but the Steelers seem to have found a real keeper. Momma is pleased…

Since last we met on this topic the personnel situation has advanced significantly. The draft has occurred, free agents signed and a significant trade. How have these developments advanced the narrative?

A quarterback controversy

I don’t believe that we have had a full-blown version of this phenomena during the Ben Roethlisberger era, although there has been some drama and conversation surrounding back- ups. But the drafting of Mason Rudolph has impacted the entire quarterback room and will likely be a focus of conversation for years to come, regardless how the situation unfolds.

The current bottom-line as I understand it now is that unless there is an injury/IR circumstance like the one that unfolded during the 2010 season when Ben, Charlie Batch, Byron Leftwich and Dennis Dixon were all on the roster, when the 2018 edition of the Steelers begins play in September one the players in that room, Ben, Rudolph, Landry Jones or Joshua Dobbs, will be gone. What should we look for going forward?

Media and the fans

This is an unalloyed victory and windfall for much of the media. Indeed, the games have already begun. This is one of those issues not really effected by the time of the year or quibbles such as hard evidence. All of Steelers Nation will be involved in the evolving debate, but it will be (sorry if this sounds rude and unkind) the lowlifes, the bottom-feeders, the ignorant and the vulgar among both the media and the fan base who will be most engaged.

Undoubtedly, some are already predisposed toward Rudolph—though the poor man has not even had the opportunity to prove anything—based upon him being the shiny new toy. Ironically, this will include many who declared Dobbs the darling last season.

Want to know how bad this could potentially get? Unless Rudolph proves a monumental bust during the preseason, I will leave it to your imagination to consider the quality of the conversation if Ben were to have a game like the 2017 regular season contest against the Jaguars.

In that constellation of irritating topics that occasionally go into remission, but never really go away, Ben vs Mason has the potential of being right up there with Mike Tomlin’s competence, Le’Veon Bell’s value, why wasn’t a tight end drafted, will Terrell Edmunds and Marcus Allen be converted to inside linebacker, and, if Ryan Shazier returns, should it be as a safety?

Randy Fichtner

He still retains the title of Quarterback Coach. You know he must feel some kind of way about all four players, though we are unlikely to have a candid confession until these events are in the past. And while Kevin Colbert, Tomlin and some others may have had their fingers closer to the trigger of the gun that set this into motion, being the incoming Offensive Coordinator gave Fichtner some say and influence in the decision. Makes one wonder whether things would have played out the same if Todd Haley would have been still around.

Ben

The drama queen accusations are already being leveled by some, but Jim Wexell and others bring some nuance to this. Consider the following, starting with the least selfish:

• Ben is THE leader of the group currently occupying the Steelers locker room. Among other things, with James Harrison and William Gay now gone, he is the only player with a Super Bowl ring, newcomer Morgan Burnett excepted. Team management and fans can afford the luxury of thinking about how to win the Lombardi in 2023. The majority of the current team will almost certainly not be a part of that. Their priority will be the urgency of winning now. In that context, the question of the investment of a fairly high draft choice on a player unlikely to be a difference maker in the here and now is valid and probably shared by a number of his teammates who do not have either the platform and status to express the sentiment.

• Ben is the leader of the quarterbacks. Fans and media can be cavalier about Landry Jones and Josh Dobbs being measured for a spot under the bus. Ben can, but should not.

• On a personal level this does have career implications for Ben, regardless of how he plays in the coming years and how beneficial it may be for the organization. Because of his age and price tag, a rising heir apparent will impact his negotiating leverage and make for a less pleasant work environment.

Landry Jones

The assumption has been that Jones is in the more favored position, with Dobbs being the odd man out. I don’t necessarily agree. If the upside potential is really there, then Dobbs can work as either a two or three on the depth chart. On the other hand, Jones only works as a two in such a scenario.

This means Jones remains viable only if he beats out both Dobbs and Rudolph in camp. Assuming Rudolph doesn’t do an Alonzo Jackson, Ben looks healthy (and why would you have him do anything beyond throwing balls into trashcans until September?), and Dobbs fights Jones to a draw, what do you do? A trade would be a real possibility. And, lets be honest, fairly or not, Jones continues to be despised by many, therefore, any excuse to push him out the door by some would be welcomed.

Joshua Dobbs

At first blush the situation seems to really suck. But if that upside potential is really there, and there have been no indications that he has performed below expectations so far, then Dobbs may have a friend in Fichtner. By this I mean that if the new Offensive Coordinator believes that one of the youngsters (Rudolph or Dobbs) could (aided by his quarterback whispering) carry the team through a short-term emergency, then Jones becomes expendable, and the controversy morphs into Dobbs vs Rudolph, with the loser signing a fat contract somewhere else in a few years. Plus, Dobbs is stylistically different enough from Rudolph and, unlike Jones, genuinely popular as that rocket scientist underdog (also a fourth round pick himself) that he can’t be so easily written off.

Mason Rudolph

The feelings here fluctuate between envy and pity. He has the luxury of development. If he is, in fact, a first round caliber talent, he will be spared the burdens and pitfalls of having to immediately carry a flawed franchise (a prerequisite in most cases to procure first round talent). Unlike what was the case with Ben, the chances that he will be called upon to lead the offense before he is ready to do so are exceedingly small, given the presence of a Hall of Fame quarterback still operating at the peak of his powers along with that of a competent and experienced back-up. Whenever that moment comes, it is almost a guarantee that he will be handed the keys to a top-of-the- line vehicle, with technical support second to none. If he truly possesses the potential, the path to personal and competitive success is wide open.

But (and there are several).

Expectations are high; often unrealistically and unreasonably so. The problem with being placed on a very high pedestal is it makes for a hard, uncomfortable landing when they decide to kick you off. At any point if those expectations aren’t met or exceeded, we can be certain that the ‘unrealistic’ will be ignored by those brandishing the torches and pitchforks.

Rudolph is entering a world where some were calling for the head of the coach (Chuck Noll) while he was in the midst of a six-year, four championship run. The ‘jury is still out’ on the current coach (Tomlin) whose body of work compares favorably to the likes of Curly Lambeau and Don Shula, among others. The Hall of Fame quarterback and the running back generally recognized as a generational talent and the best in the game currently, are often subjected to scathing criticism, along with frequent musings that the team might be better off without their services. A 13-3 season is dismissed as just being deeply disappointing and below the line.

There is a good chance that he won’t get his opportunity until some point well beyond when he became ready, and when he does the chances he will disappoint a significant segment of the Nation regardless of the actual quality of his performance is, in my estimation, 100 percent. Hope he’s ready.

Wide receivers

For years now, the wide receivers have been one of, if not the cornerstone of the team. Last season, as it has been often, the greatest concern was who among a deep, talented group would be able to secure a helmet. As it developed, three players who made significant contributions in 2016 (Sammie Coates, Cobi Hamilton and Demarcus Ayers) found themselves on the outside looking in.

This season is different. Things are fine at the top with Antonio Brown and JuJu Smith- Schuster, but with the loss of Martavis Bryant and Eli Rogers to trade and injury respectively, things get a little thin.

Viewed another way, this continues the controversy in the quarterback room, because Ben Roethlisberger and others may see the transaction as Bryant for Rudolph. If so, I might be a little annoyed as well.

Let’s be clear. The most important acquisition from Oklahoma State at present is wide receiver James Washington. If he turns out to be closer to JuJu 2.0 than Coates 2.0 (or God forbid, Sweed 2.0), then no worries. Justin Hunter and Darrius Heyward-Bey fill out the bottom of the depth chart just fine, Darryl Drake has plenty to work with, and by Columbus Day no one is missing Martavis.

The defense

While freely acknowledging its difficulties, I would also gently remind the reader that neither Dick LeBeau or Johnnie Mitchell were great fans of throwing young, inexperienced players into the fray too soon. Perhaps, now we know some of the reasons why. And the Steelers defense remains very young.

While there are intriguing questions everywhere, including the coming roster battle between Dan McCullers and Joshua Frazier and the depth issues at linebacker, the questions involving the secondary are particularly fascinating.

Perhaps we should look at this situation backwards. What would have to go wrong for this unit to not improve significantly in 2018?

• Tom Bradley would have to be a bust as a hire. This is not unheard of. There were a few disappointments with offensive line coaches until Mike Munchak came along.
• Either Artie Burns, Sean Davis or both have peaked in their development.
• Joe Haden is, in fact, in decline. So much so that a year in the system will not have a positive impact.
• Nat Berhe, Morgan Burnett and Coty Sensabaugh are all free agent busts, providing, at best, no value added to the departed Robert Golden, Mike Mitchell and William Gay.
• Despite spending much of 2017 on IR, Cam Sutton’s presence doesn’t materially improve the quality of the group.
• Mike Hilton was performing way over his head and devolves.
• Brian Allen does not improve.
• Terrell Edmunds turns out to prove the pundits right and is just okay, and maybe even substandard as a first round talent. Both he and Marcus Allen may pan out after a couple years of seasoning.
• No one knows who Jordan Dangerfield possesses compromising photos of, but that must be it.
• There is no ‘this year’s Mike Hilton’.

That’s a lot of things that need to go wrong (injuries aside). So, cheer up!

Thanks to Ivan for a lot to chew on, as always!

By Homer J.

“Can’t Act. Can’t Sing. Slightly Balding. Can Dance a Little.”

That’s how the guy who gave Fred Astaire his Hollywood screen test rated the greatest hoofer of all time. The debut performance of Debussy’s timeless “Clair de Lune” was described as “ugly to the ears,” by the most respected Parisian critic of the time.

When George Gershwin’s beloved “Rhapsody in Blue” premiered at Aeolian Hall in New York in 1924, New York Tribune reviewer Lawrence Gilman was less than overwhelmed. “How trite, feeble and conventional the tunes are; how sentimental and vapid the harmonic treatment, under its disguise of fussy and futile counterpoint! … Weep over the lifelessness of the melody and harmony, so derivative, so stale, so inexpressive!”

“Fiddler on the Roof” was described as “nothing special” by the Variety stringer who reviewed its off-Broadway opening.

And Rex Reed and most of the other jerks who review movies panned the greatest movie of all time, “A Christmas Story.” (They just hated producer Bob Clark, because he did those Porky’s movies and Reed would never know what to do with a Red Ryder BB gun, anyway).

But my favorite review of all time was Vito Stellino’s review of the Pittsburgh Steelers 1974 draft in the Post-Gazette:

“The Steelers seem to have come out of the first five rounds of the draft appreciably strengthened at wide receiver but nowhere else. They didn’t get a tight end. They didn’t get a punter. They didn’t get an offensive tackle who might’ve shored up what could well become a weakness. What they did get was Swann, who seems to be a sure-pop to help; Lambert, who figures to be the No. 5 linebacker if he pans out; and three question marks.”

Guess he didn’t think much of that Stallworth kid or that 5th round pick out of Wisconsin, Webster.

You never know. Great picks can meet with awful misfortune, like Gabe Rivera or the Penguins’ Michel Briere. A tragic car crash ended Rivera’s career. Another ended Briere’s life. So many other seemingly great choices have met with career ending injuries.

Often a great quarterback choice ends up with a terrible team, and is beset by injuries because the team can’t protect him. Other good quarterbacks – guys like Matt Cassell – have the luxury of sitting on the bench and developing behind great quarterbacks….and they become great value when they are either plugged in to sub for the injured star or traded away for a first or second round draft pick.

And sometimes, guys who look good in college turn out to be great when the hit the pros. Yep, you really can “coach ’em up.” And guys in the locker room play a big part in attitude adjustment.

The Steelers didn’t get their punter in the 1974 draft, but they actually did get a tight end named Randy Grossman who today is the proud owner of four Super Bowl rings. 

The NFL Player Selection Meeting (draft) is sort of like Christmas, are we are all like Ralphie – waiting to see if we got our Red Ryder BB gun or that shutdown corner we’ve been asking Santa to bring. We love it. It’s fun, and it’s fun to see what the other kids got. But I never forget Vito Stellino’s instant analysis of the greatest draft ever. And, remember, Vito was a helluva football writer.

Let that be a warning to all of us as we try to make sense of this year’s picks, as surprising as they are. 

When I read and hear the pronouncements of all the “experts” on the blogs and on NFLTV and ESPN, I recall the wisdom of the revered ABC News economics correspondent, Dan Cordtz. Every so often, Dan would come in to do radio reports on the latest jobless figures or factory output numbers. Really boring stuff, but sometimes very important. He would do a 30-second report, giving the numbers and a brief explanation. Then we were required to do an informal QnA, where he would explain the figures in layman’s language.

Invariably, my question to Dan would be, “what’s it all mean, Dan?” And invariably, the bald-headed, moustachioed sage would do a countdown and give the same answer, “Three, two, one,…..It don’t mean shit.”

When I first posted this piece back in 2011, I referred to Dan as “the late, great Dan Cordtz and ended it by saying, “Dan’s gone now, but his answer still stands with so much of the post-draft analysis.” Much to my surprise and delight, Dan personally corrected me with an e-mail response that my report of his death was premature. 

Dan was last reported alive and well at age 91 and living in Florida. And Homer, thus chastened, reminds everyone that it is dangerous to assume anything and that – in the final analysis – all those draft report cards still don’t mean shit. 

Thanks so much to Homer for this reminder to all of us to hold our fire—and, for that matter, our over-the-top enthusiasm—for guys who have never played a snap of NFL football, even in OTAs. Time will reveal all. Mel Kiper and his ilk get paid to sound like they knows what he’s talking about, but it shouldn’t fool us into thinking they know any better than anyone else how any particular player is going to develop….

I said yesterday I wasn’t going to write any more about the draft until we came back from our anniversary trip, but we don’t leave until tomorrow, and I just have to take a few minutes out from packing and such to comment on last night.

What a day for Pittsburgh sports! The Penguins beat the Capitals in the first game of the second round, in Washington, but considering that Washington has been their traditional second-round opponent every time they’ve won the cup, perhaps it isn’t surprising. It is a bit more surprising that they did it without Carl Hagelin and Evgeni Malkin, but there you are.

Then comes the news that Jung Ho Gung, the Korean player the Pirates had presumably given up on ever seeing again, finally got a visa. It’s been a year and a half, at least. There are plenty who would say the Pirates should turn their back on him, and there’s no doubt he screwed up royally. Nor does anyone know whether he’s still good at baseball. But I’m hoping this is the chance he needs to turn his life around. How quick we are as a society to turn on celebrities. Perhaps it makes us feel better about ourselves. I’m personally a big fan of second (or in his case, rather more than second) chances. It’s certainly his last one.

And speaking of second (and third) chances, the thing that Kevin Colbert swore wasn’t going to happen happened yesterday—the Steelers traded Martavis Bryant to the Raiders for a third-round pick. I think it is excellent for everyone. The Steelers get a pick back for the fourth-rounder they traded to the 49ers for Vance McDonald, but a much better one—middle of the 3rd round. They can pick up another big receiver, probably in the 2nd or 3rd round, and hopefully everyone is happy. Bryant gets a fresh start and the Steelers get to move on from a question mark.

After all, there are three possible scenarios for this coming season with Bryant on the roster. 1) He has a monster season and then parlays that into a huge contract with another team. Great for 2018, not so great ongoing. 2) He has an up-and-down season like last year and frustrates everyone, including himself, because he stops getting “mines.” Bad for the team, bad for the locker room, I’m guessing. Or the worst scenario—3) he isn’t doing well or getting enough balls, gets depressed, smokes some weed, and bang, he’s out of football, maybe forever. I’m guessing he’ll be a focus of the offense in Oakland, at least unless he proves himself unworthy of it, and he can blossom. Hopefully he won’t do so the week we have to play the Raiders, in Oakland, but that’s the breaks…

And then there was the surprise announcer of the Steelers’ pick. Ryan Shazier walked to the podium with his fiancee to make the pick. If you haven’t seen the video, check it out. It’s front and center on Steelers.com. If you can watch it and not tear up, you’re a hard-hearted person, is all I can say.

And of course many are tearing up, in a different sense, over the pick itself. It absolutely came out of nowhere—rather like the Ryan Shazier pick, actually. But even more so. Most don’t have anything against Terrell Edmunds, only that they felt he should have been taken in the third round. The Steelers, obviously, didn’t feel that way, nor, apparently, did they feel comfortable trading down and taking a chance on him being gone. (Or perhaps they couldn’t find any trade partners.)

I’ve read a bit of the analysis, and here’s what stood out to me:

Edmunds is a hybrid safety who can play at the line of scrimmage and can play some man coverage.

He is in the super high character mold of recent drafts. The man he and his brother Trumaine (who was taken by the Bills at Pick 16,) trained with the same guy, and according to Mike Mayock said that the two young men were the politest and nicest young men he’d ever worked with. With any luck this means that Edmunds will say “I’m sorry” when he’s forced to snatch a ball away from an opposing receiver.

Because yes, he has ball skills. Not so much last year as in 2016. But it turns out there’s a reason—he was playing with an injured shoulder for the whole season, until he finally had to give up and have the surgery. Kevin Colbert said they were impressed by this, and I assume they are thinking his 2016 tape is more realistic, assuming Edmunds is healthy.

And this also demonstrates his commitment to the team—that he would continue to play, knowing he couldn’t play as well, and that it was going to hurt his draft stock.

And finally, he was responsible for lining up the defense, and apparently was very good at it. His plus communication skills were undoubtedly one of the things that attracted Tomlin and Colbert to him.

Well, there’s no telling whether he will turn out to be a Jarvis Jones or a (hopefully luckier) Ryan Shazier. You could pretty much say that about anybody they took. But hopefully a similar scenario will play out to Shazier’s draft year, in that many thought the Steelers might take Stephon Tuitt in the first round and were outraged at the pick. And instead the Steelers got both men*. I’m hopeful that someone they had highly graded will fall to them in the second round.

We will see. In the meantime, it’s going to be hard to top last night, in terms of sheer Pittsburgh sports drama.

And now I really am shutting this down. Unless, of course, the Steelers’ next three picks all come from my mock drafts. Who knows what I would do then?

*They still have Shazier. He of course will not be able to play this season. And very possibly not ever. Coming back from an injury like that when you’re a player whose game is predicated on blazing speed is extremely difficult, in terms of whether you can ever be the same player. One can’t help but think of Sean Spence. If I were Shazier’s fiancee I would be praying every chance I got that he never walks onto another football field, at least in a uniform. But watching his indomitable spirit is inspiring for everyone, and the Steelers seem determined to involve and utilize him as much as possible.

One position that hasn’t been addressed at all in my mocks is a development project for the offensive line. I haven’t checked out the rugby player yet, but I’m really hoping he’ll make the cut. My Welsh son-in-law is obsessed with the idea of seeing American football players play rugby, so at least he can see it the other way around. So let’s begin with him:

? Jordan Mailata

The question mark is, of course, because Mailata has never played a single snap of American football at any level. He’s a freak athlete, and huge—6’8″, 345 pounds, 36″ arms and 11″ hands(!). And despite all this he ran a sub-5.0 40 time at the combine, which is pretty amazing.

This combination of size and athleticism is seldom found outside of the upper rounds. So why on earth would anyone think he will be available to the Steelers in Round 7? It’s a bit like real estate, in my opinion.

Probably 90% of ordinary house-buyers (in other words, people who aren’t particularly experienced at evaluating real property) walk into a house and are immediately overwhelmed, for good or ill, by stuff that has nothing to do with the actual house. Maybe the seller was smart enough to get one of those home stylists (I forget what they are called) to come in, cull their excess stuff and put it in a storage unit, and even maybe move in some different furniture. So now the house exudes an aura of calm and comfort, which appeals to almost everyone. And if in addition the decor appeals to the buyer’s taste, they can easily see themselves in the house and are much more likely to make an offer.

Conversely, if they walk in and there are clothes on the floor and peeling wallpaper and grime on the light switches, most people are put off. But the point is, what matters is what’s underneath. If the basic structure is good and the basic layout is either more or less what you need, or can be easily altered, the decor and cleanliness (or lack thereof) are entirely beside the point. But it’s very difficult for most people to imagine what it could be like.

NFL scouts are, I would think, also prone to blind spots. If they weren’t, their record would be better.

Some of them are stuck on measurables. There is something to be said for that, as you can’t make a guy taller (although you can, to some extent, alter his body composition for the better, assuming he’s willing to cooperate.) Al Davis was famously wowed by speed, and again, you can’t teach speed. But he made some pretty poor draft picks because of his obsession with pure speed, divorced from the other qualities you need in a given position.

You get the idea. The NFL scouts, coaches,and GMs presumably try very hard to take everything into consideration, but in the end they either love a player or they don’t. It is all exacerbated by the fact that nobody knows exactly how a player is going to look once he hits the NFL.

The Steelers have made plenty of such mistakes. Limas Sweed had everything, and was the “steal of the draft” according to some, but the one difficult-to-see thing he didn’t have (or couldn’t develop with the Steelers at any rate) was the between-the-ears stuff. Jarvis Jones was a high-character, productive-in-college guy who never quite achieved the next level. And so on.

On the other hand, a whole lot of teams passed on AB because of his size and small-school resume.

So to return to Mr. Mailata, he’s got most of what you want in an NFL tackle (he’s actually a bit tall, which can be a problem, as Alejandro Villanueva occasionally has struggled with.) But nobody knows whether he can actually play offensive tackle (or anything else) in the NFL. Or at least learn to do so within a reasonable time frame.

While Villanueva was a novice on the O-line when the Steelers picked him up, he had at least played a lot of football—at a handful of positions. Mailata starts from zero, other than he’s played a game that uses a somewhat similarly-shaped ball.

All of that said, I would love to see him fall to the Steelers. They have the best O-line coach in the league, thank heavens—I was really afraid for a few weeks that Mike Munchak was going to leave. (Which makes you wonder if in the end the choice the Steelers were making was between Munchak and Todd Haley. But I suppose we will never know for sure.) And the Steelers (and Munchak in particular) have the experience of teaching a guy the position from the ground up.

And one would presume Mailata has the desire to succeed, since he’s giving up a promising rugby career to take this gamble. I assume that the money, even for an entry-level NFL guy, is substantially better. But we all know what assumptions do. So I looked it up.

Last year the players in the NRL (the Australian league) negotiated a new deal with the owners. The salary for an average player will increase over the next several years until it is double what it was in 2016, and the salary cap has increased for 2018 to $9.4 million. Mind you, this is for a 29-man squad rather than a 53-man roster. But don’t forget that the Australian dollar is currently worth about 76 cents in US dollars. So for 2018 the average salary will increase to $313,000 (Australian dollars, or about $220,000.) The NFL minimum appears to be about $500,000. But other than the signing bonus, which for a 7th-rounder is somewhere around $60,000, nothing is guaranteed for players taken below the second round. Or so I surmised from this article on SI.com.

All of this is to say that Mr. Mailata is taking a gamble on his own ability to translate his rugby skills to the NFL quickly, and if he doesn’t succeed it surely won’t be for lack of trying. I will be fascinated to see how soon somebody decides to pull the trigger.

As far as I can tell, he has only visited five teams—the Steelers, the Washington team (my boycott on their name still stands), the Eagles, the Browns, and the LA Chargers. The Eagles have the last pick in the sixth round, naturally, and Washington has the pick before (traded from the Browns.) There are a bunch of compensatory picks after that, but none for the teams Mailata visited. The Steelers have the second pick in Round 7, right after the Patriots. This does not, of course, preclude a team who didn’t invite him for a visit from grabbing him ahead of the Steelers. Fingers crossed!

And now for the more usual sort of prospects. Or Moore. Because, people, Momma has fallen completely for this guy:

FB/TE/LS John David Moore

Handsome. Check. High character. Check. Smart. Check. Hardworking. Check. Moore has got it all. And although I put “handsome” first, actually this guy could have looked like Quasimodo and I still would have been interested (assuming I made it past the pictures.)

This young man is the first football player at LSU in 40 years to attempt an architecture major, much less to graduate, which he is about to do. The program at LSU is a five-year grind which not everyone can manage. In fact, in Moore’s class only 25 of the 90 originally enrolled will graduate. His GPA averaged between 3.9 and 4.1.

But wait, there’s more. Last fall Moore was named to the SEC Community Service team. The purpose of this team is to “highlight an athlete from each school who gives back to his community through superior service efforts.” He wears No. 18 on LSU’s team, which they award each year to a player that “represents what it means to be a LSU football player and one who serves as a great teammate, possessing a selfless attitude [and] work ethic, and is a model citizen, both on and off the field.”

But wait, there’s more. Notice all those abbreviations in front of his name? He primarily played fullback but moved to tight end in 2017. He trained for his Pro Day at both fullback and tight end, and added in training for long snapper drills, as he wanted to show his versatility. Coach T is all about versatility. I’m all about having a back-up long snapper who actually knows what he’s doing…

If I haven’t mentioned it yet, I love this guy. I would sure love to see him in the Black and Gold!

I was going to quit here, as it was difficult to see how these guys could be improved upon, but steelmn suggested a guy, and a quick look indicated there was a lot to like about him. So let’s take a not-quite-so-quick look at:

OLB Nick DeLuca

Let’s get this out of the way first—the Steelers didn’t take a look at him. He was invited to the Combine, but apparently they didn’t even talk to him there. Which makes the likelihood of the Steelers picking him up a good bit less. But by the time the Steelers make their last 7th round pick there aren’t many more guys who are going to be drafted, (10 more, actually,) and the fun with free agent signings begins.

And DeLuca has some intriguing aspects. Let’s start with what steelmn thinks:

“I hope the Steelers look into Nick DeLuca, an ILB from North Dakota State who I think will be a solid NFL player. He won’t make anyone forget about Ryan Shazier when it comes to straight line speed but he has the “nose for the ball” instincts and he doesn’t miss tackles. Both of those things are needed in the middle if the Steelers are going to return to the defensive standard set by the Steel Curtain.

He was the best player on the best defense in the FCS and he opened a lot of eyes at the Senior Bowl. The Steelers could probably get him in the 7th round or even as an UDFA.”

Lance Zierlein appears to like him, with one big proviso—he had significant injuries in both 2016 and 2017. And, as noted by steelmn, he isn’t fast. Zierlein says “Doesn’t run fast even when healthy.”

From my standpoint, he graduated last December (degree in University Studies), which you all know I like, and he certainly checks off the “handsome” box. And here’s a fun fact—his former Little League football team named an award after him—”The DeLuca.” I don’t know what the award is for, but it sounds good!

It seems as if he’s a guy who really ought to get a shot in the NFL, and who knows? Maybe the Steelers will be the one to give it to him. Thanks for the tip, steelmn!

And now I bid you adieu for a few days. My husband and I are taking a little trip to a former part of the USSR (Bratislava) to celebrate our 40th anniversary. Amazingly, he has managed to put up with me for four decades, probably primarily for my cooking. Whoever coined the phrase “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach” knew what they were talking about. So once again life is going to trump football this offseason, at least for a while. But I’ll be back in the next few weeks with some thoughts on the draftees, and perhaps Ivan and Hombre de Acero will chime in…

Proceeding on the same assumption as yesterday’s mock, I’m going to assume that there are no trades, and that the Steelers drafted my top picks in each round. (That would be the day!) Which means we now have a safety, an OLB, and an ILB. Perhaps not in the order some would have preferred, but that’s the breaks. Given that the biggest and most obvious holes are now fortuitously filled, we can spend some time on special teams aces and perhaps a project running back or wide receiver. The latter would give us the opportunity to see if the Steelers’ recent success was possibly due to having Richard Mann on staff. In fairness, I should point out that Mann didn’t join the Steelers’ staff until early 2013, so he didn’t have a hand in the drafting of guys such as Antonio Brown.

I was originally going to put Rounds 5 and 7 together, but with two picks in each round that’s a lot of guys to look at. So let’s get busy!

RB/WR Reggie Bonnafon

Not only is Bonnafon interesting as a prospect, he has the charming attribute of being multi-position capable, as a QB who was moved to WR and then RB because of team needs at Louisville. We all know Mike Tomlin loves the Swiss-Army-knife kind of guys. And I love the sort of guy who just does what’s needed, without making a fuss.

He’s tall (6’2” or 6’3” depending upon who you believe) and extremely fast—he ran a 4.4 40 at his Pro Day. (He didn’t get invited to the Combine.)

You can read a bit more about him here, or just gaze into those lustrous eyes and see the soul of a Steeler. Up to you…

LB Saquem Griffen

A surprise addition to my lineup, mainly because I forgot about him in the Round 5 post. What’s not to love about this guy? He has persevered through discouragement and adversity that would have crushed many, and triumphed.  Please read his Letter to NFL GMs published recently in the Player’s Tribune. It is extremely moving.

In the footbally sense, he has a twin brother in the NFL (Shaquille Griffen, a DB for the Seahawks). He was a last-minute invitee to the Combine, and posted the fastest time for a linebacker ever recorded—a 4.38. That’s some crazy stuff. He straps a prosthetic hand to his left arm to lift, and had 20 reps in the bench press. Mike Mayock, who is presumably pretty jaded at this point, said he “almost teared up” watching Griffen at the bench press. (In guy-speak, I believe this is the equivalent to torrential tears.)

You can read lots more about him at his NFL.com Draft Profile  I’ll just finish up with what an NFC scout had to say (and which will make more sense if you’ve read the article linked above:)

The old staff signed him just to make sure they got his brother. The new staff realized the guy was a player and plugged him in and he wins Defensive Player of the Year in his conference. He doesn’t have a left hand. That’s going to limit him with some things and that’s going to hurt his draft value, but he’s fast and athletic and makes a ton of plays.

He may not be available when the Steelers pick at No. 11 in Round 5, especially as the Seahawks, who are reportedly interesting in uniting him with his twin, have two picks prior to that. But who knows? I for one would be thrilled to see him in the Black and Gold. And what a story it would be if the next Super Bowl pitted him and his twin against each other! If it happens, just remember I called it : )

WR Justin Watson

I tried to take Watson off the list after putting up Reggie Bonnafon, but I just couldn’t do it. He was just too productive at Penn and just looked too good doing it. He is also incredibly durable—he never missed a game—and had a school record which will undoubtedly never be broken—he had a reception in every single game of his four-year career. In his last season he even had a touchdown in every single game. That’s remarkable, even considering the lesser level of defenders in the Ivy League. He also considers himself to be a good blocker, and likes doing it. Which is always welcome.

He will be graduating from the Wharton College of Business this spring. But he is apparently a football junkie who hopes to continue to work in the NFL after his playing days are over.

You can read more about him in the Round 5 article.

And now, our final Round 5 prospect. Please note that, unlike the earlier rounds, these are not listed in ascending order of precedence, because honestly, who could pick between these guys?

ILB Joel Iyiegbuniwe

I didn’t actually say too much about this young man in the previous article. I think I was getting tired. So let’s fill in some of the pieces:

Bucky Brooks of NFL.com did a segment comparing Iyiegbuniwe and my third-round pick Darius Leonard, stating his belief that they are both potential stars in the NFL. Brooks seems to think he is likely to be picked earlier than the fifth round, and Lance Zierlein has a fifth-round grade on him. Whatever. Perhaps we could have a segment in which Brooks and Zierlein duke it out. Or perhaps we could just wait to see where he actually gets drafted.

Iyiegbuniwe (who is called Iggy by his teammates, some of whom still can’t spell his name) was incredibly productive for Western Kentucky, despite losing some time to injury. He appears to be a bit of a safety/ILB/OLB hybrid, which sounds crazy, I know, but perhaps one could also describe Ryan Shazier this way. A very high-character guy as well, he plans to go to medical school after the NFL. (Unlike Myron Rolle, he isn’t trying to do it all at once, which has a lot to be said for it.) He expects to graduate this year, and drove back and forth between school and his combine training facility this spring to finish his final credit—a biology lab.

His linebackers coach had this to say about his leadership: