The good news. The Pittsburgh Steelers got something for their 2023 first-round and 2025 third-round selections, OT Broderick Jones and RB Kaleb Johnson.<\/p>\n
The bad news. The Pittsburgh Steelers had to get something for their 2023 first-round and 2025 third-round selections, OT Broderick Jones and RB Kaleb Johnson.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the push and pull of a missed draft pick. The upside in cutting losses and getting something in return. The reminder of these picks not becoming who the team hoped they\u2019d be on draft night.<\/p>\n
Broderick Jones was supposed to be a franchise left tackle. Kaleb Johnson was supposed to be a downhill runner and strong scheme fit. Neither of those things came to pass. When push came to shove, the Steelers avoided the dreaded \u201csunk cost fallacy.\u201d The trappings of there\u2019s so much invested, we can\u2019t give up.<\/p>\n
Plenty of virtual ink has been spent litigating the reasons why Jones and Johnson failed in Pittsburgh. There\u2019s always a combination of factors: scouting misevaluation, coaching malpractice, schematic misalignment. All of the above apply to both players.<\/p>\n
No matter the reason, the Steelers faced their reality. Jones, if not traded, may have made the 53-man roster. Still, he is in the last year of his rookie deal, wasn\u2019t going to start, and could have soon lost his top swingman status. All it would have taken is Max Iheanachor starting over Dylan Cook to send Cook into that role and Jones into deep-reserve territory.<\/p>\n
Johnson\u2019s situation was cut and dry. A clean slate with a new coaching staff also meant he was off scholarship. He tumbled down the depth chart in training camp and wasn\u2019t going to make the team. Instead of cutting him, the Steelers dealt him for a late-round 2028 pick.<\/a><\/p>\n Getting a pick is better than nothing, but the focus here should be Pittsburgh\u2019s willingness to admit its errors. A new coaching staff made that easier, but some teams will still be stubborn about it.<\/p>\n These mistakes cost Pittsburgh. In Omar Khan\u2019s four draft classes, the Steelers have spent three first-round selections on offensive tackles. That math isn\u2019t ideal.<\/p>\n Trading Johnson has felt less consequential but more immediate with even less return than Jones. He\u2019s the team\u2019s first top-100 pick who failed to make the roster in his second season since OG Kraig Urbik in 2010 and has the second-fewest carries of any Steelers back holding that status since the merger. Only Laverne Smith, a fourth-round pick but 99th selection in 1977<\/a>, had fewer than Johnson\u2019s 28. Khan and company share the blame even while getting credit for making these moves.<\/p>\n Still, Khan\u2019s draft classes have been a clear improvement over Kevin Colbert\u2019s final versions. Pittsburgh is returning to its draft-develop-retain roots that built past contenders. When the Steelers have missed, they aren\u2019t refusing to admit it. The franchise is moving on. Not hanging on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The good news. The Pittsburgh Steelers got something for their 2023 first-round and 2025 third-round selections, OT Broderick…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[11863,54502,43210,73,75,74,1833,995],"class_list":["post-276380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-broderick-jones","tag-kaleb-johnson","tag-omar-khan","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-pittsburgh-steelers","tag-trending"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276380","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=276380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}