It was a pair of moves that left a fair amount of Steelers fans scratching their heads on Friday. The Steelers signed JuJu Smith-Schuster to a 1 year deal worth $8 million (but only $2.4 million against the salary cap) and also allowed Steven Nelson to pursue a trade.
Does it change what they plan to do at the fast-approaching NFL Draft just a little more than a month away? What direction are they headed in for 2021 and beyond?
The Fan Morning Show debated it Monday.
“You look at tight end, offensive lineman, inside linebacker, running back and now even defensive back, there’s a lot of places you could go,” said Colin Dunlap. “I’m still steadfast on offensive line and maybe even doubling up on offensive line (taking that position in the first two rounds of the draft).”
Chris Mack said that since free agency hit this offseason, there has been a shift in the Steelers’ priorities based on how they’ve spent, or not spent, their money.
“It’s a team going from most of their holes being on the offensive side of the ball and you thought they could focus in a couple key areas in the draft and feel like they’ve maybe plugged up some decencies heading into the summer.
What we got instead was with the release of Vince Williams, with [Mike] Hilton signing elsewhere, with [Tyson] Alualu leaving, with [Steven] Nelson now demanding a trade, what we end up with are holes on both side of the ball. There’s more question marks it feels like than there were a couple weeks ago and that’s hard to believe.”
The guys agreed that the “direction” or “identity” of the Steelers is hazy right now with no clear path on what they’re trying to do and trying build for the 2021 season.
“Are they better with JuJu? Yes. They are. But it’s the rest of it (the roster) that’s the thing,” said Jim Colony. “Unless they do something about the run game, unless they do something about the defense which has not been good in the postseason when they’ve gotten there. You can help the passing game as much as you want, and yet if you don’t shore up these other areas, we saw what happened last year.”
Many see the JuJu deal along with allowing Steven Nelson to leave as a mistake. Colin sees some logic behind the move.
“When the salary cap bounces back up, you then have a pretty good opportunity for JuJu Smith-Schuster to be here for the long haul. If you’re trying to build for the future, I think that’s a smart move. I don’t think 2 years from now, that Steven Nelson will be that great of a football player.
When the cap goes back and Nelson is a 30 year-old cornerback, signing JuJu to a one-year deal right now is taking a chance that he’s good this coming season and he re-signs long-term here when the cap rises again. So if people want to intertwine the two, I think they still win with JuJu and not with Nelson.”
Chris Mack countered by pointing out that the Steelers built themselves some depth at JuJu’s position to be able to withstand his absence, yet decided not to cut ties with him.
“You built things so that you would be ready to withstand losses at certain key positions. You were built to withstand the loss of JuJu. You’ve essentially decided that at another position where you weren’t built to withstand losses, like corner, you’re going to add another loss to that pile and re-fortify a position that you were already ready to withstand a loss at?”
The moves leave us all to debate how the Steelers are going about their offseason and it’s far from over yet.