{"id":122114,"date":"2026-02-24T14:57:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T14:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/122114\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T14:57:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T14:57:07","slug":"latest-pittsburgh-steelers-trade-prediction-sends-t-j-watt-to-afc-foe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/122114\/","title":{"rendered":"Latest Pittsburgh Steelers trade prediction sends T.J. Watt to AFC foe"},"content":{"rendered":"

We are in the midst of speculation season, as the new NFL league year is still weeks away. With that in mind, there is plenty of chatter about the Pittsburgh Steelers and the potential moves they could make, both in free agency and on the trade market.<\/p>\n

One name that has been discussed more and more over the last number of weeks is T.J. Watt. The former Defensive Player of the Year is coming off a year in which he posted just seven sacks. With his prime certainly in the rear-view mirror, many wonder if the Steelers could trade the three-time sack king just one year after giving him a three-year extension. Dan Wilkins of The Score believes it should happen and wants to see the Los Angeles Chargers make the move. Wilkins projects a 2026 second-round pick and a 2027 fourth-round pick could get the job done.<\/p>\n

\u201cWatt wearing anything other than black and gold would be unimaginably strange,\u201d Wilkins writes<\/a>. \u201cAnd considering the Steelers\u2019 long-running distaste for rebuilds, we probably can\u2019t expect them to focus on the future. But this exercise is less about predicting what teams will do and more about identifying what they should do. As painful as it might be, moving on from Watt\u2019s expensive contract ahead of his age-32 season fits into the latter category for Pittsburgh.\u201d<\/p>\n

Herbig is in line for an extension, as 2026 is the final year of his rookie deal. Considering how explosive he has been, along with the productivity of Highsmith and the solid rookie year from Sawyer, moving Watt makes sense, even if some Steelers fans wouldn\u2019t want to see it.<\/p>\n

Let us know what you think in the comments. Be sure to bookmark Behind the Steel Curtain for all the latest news, breakdowns, and more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We are in the midst of speculation season, as the new NFL league year is still weeks away.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74,4853,7107],"class_list":["post-122114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-pittsburgh-steelers-news","tag-pittsburgh-steelers-rumors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}