PITTSBURGH — The Steelers will trade up to draft Malik Willis on Thursday. Or maybe they will trade down and take Desmond Ridder or stay put and draft Kenny Pickett or Jordan Davis. Or maybe they will take Tyler Linderbaum, or maybe Chris Olave or Jameson Williams or ...
Am I doing this right?
I suppose if I throw enough names and possibilities out there, I will eventually be right and I can be considered an expert draft guru, too!
I love the NFL draft. I hate all the hype, pomp and circumstance that leads up to the draft and I especially hate all the mock drafting type stuff that goes on. I get that there is an appetite for draft information and it has become a cottage industry, but regardless of how tapped in an insider is, they are all just guessing.
The Steelers pick No. 20 in the draft, which begins Thursday, and this is one of the most anticipated picks I can remember them making. There seems to be an anxious energy among fans about it because of the very real possibility that they could take a quarterback with their pick.
This would be the first time since 2004, when the Steelers picked Ben Roethlisberger, that they would use their first pick on a quarterback. This would also be the first time since 2004 the Steelers have a need at quarterback. Prior to that it was 1980 and Mark Malone, and prior to that it was 1970 and Terry Bradshaw. We often talk about the Steelers having only three coaches in 53 years. but the fact that they have only drafted three quarterbacks in the first round in the same amount of time is just as amazing.
I have listened to all the gurus and experts give their opinions on the quarterbacks. I have listened to all of the local analysis about which quarterbacks the Steelers are most interested in. There are about five of them that the Steelers have been connected to: Ridder, Pickett, Willis, Sam Howell from North Carolina and Mississippi's Matt Corral.
There are mixed opinions about which quarterback is the best in this class and which is worthy of being the first one off the board. There are some experts who don't think any of them are going to be franchise quarterbacks and thus none of them are worthy of being first rounders.
I honestly don't care about any of that stuff because it is all speculation and only time will tell about every player taken in this draft.
The important thing to note is that regardless of whom the Steelers take, they really can't afford to be wrong this year. And that's especially true if they are going to draft a quarterback because if they draft the wrong one, it will set them back a number of years. They need to make sure that the quarterback they take is the one they really want, the one that they think can take them to the playoffs and beyond multiple times.
There are quite simply still too many holes for the Steelers to take a chance at drafting a quarterback they aren't 100% sure about. There aren't any guarantees, but the Steelers have scouted all these quarterbacks enough to see any red flags that may give them pause, and they cannot ignore those.
That's especially true considering there are a lot of really good players available who aren't quarterbacks. The Steelers' recent draft history has probably been best described as underwhelming after a run of putting together some really good drafts. There are a lot of players from these recent drafts on the roster, but that doesn't necessarily mean they were all good picks.
The last six first-round picks are Najee Harris, Devin Bush, Terrell Edmunds, T.J. Watt, Artie Burns and Bud Dupree. The Steelers didn't have a first-round pick in 2020, so their first pick was in the second round and they took Chase Claypool.
Harris seems to be a really good pick, but he has to continue to build on his rookie year and stay durable for the next three or four seasons. The jury is still out on Claypool, but so far he has been a disappointment. The same can be said about Bush and Edmunds, though Edmunds is coming off a solid year. Watt is obviously a Hall of Famer, but Burns was a bust and Dupree really only had one high-level season before moving on to Tennessee.
That's not good enough, and it is one reason the Steelers' reload/rebuild might take a little longer than the front office had hoped. The Steelers can't afford to have another draft where the top pick isn't an impact player. It doesn't have to be a Watt-level star, but it can't be another player like Bush or Edmunds and it especially can't be another Burns.
This is the Steelers' first year after Roethlisberger, which means it is, regardless of how you classify it, the first year of a rebuild. That, not the fact that the Steelers could draft a quarterback, is why this first-round pick — and the draft in general — is more crucial than it has been in other years.
