The 2016 season is unfortunately over, and the Pittsburgh Steelers are now embarking upon their latest offseason journey, heading back to the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex, formerly known and still referred to as the ‘South Side’ facility of Heinz Field. While the postseason is now behind us, there is plenty left to discuss.
And there are plenty of questions left unanswered as well. The offseason is just really the beginning phase of the answer-seeking process, which is lasts all the way through the Super Bowl for teams fortunate enough to reach that far.
You can rest assured that we have the questions, and we will be monitoring the developments in the offseason as they develop, and beyond, looking for the answers as we look to evaluate the makeup of the Steelers as they try to navigate their way back to the Super Bowl, after reaching the AFC Championship game last season for the first time in more than half a decade.
Question: Which any one player in the upcoming draft would most be of benefit to the Steelers in 2017?
Be forewarned, we’re about to get into major hypothetical territory.
Not that that is anything uncommon in the football community in the down time between the Super Bowl and the draft. Mock drafts mark the lay of the land up and down the coast and everywhere in between, and all of them are inevitably wrong. The day somebody actually gets it right is probably the day the sun annihilates the planet several billion years from now.
But anyway, on to the topic. The Steelers may be picking 30th in this draft, and they may ostensibly hold to the best player available philosophy, but in this scenario, there are two ground rules: any draft-eligible player is fair game, and it must be a player who will make an immediate impact.
A hot topic for a couple of years now—really, at least half a decade if we want to get technical—has been the Steelers’ ‘championship window’ and how soon it might be closing. What with a certain quarterback more openly discussing life after football this offseason, the window seems to be far closer to the sill than it ever has before.
So with that in mind, we are either entering a phase in which the Steelers are more heavily weighing the abilities of players to contribute right away, either based on their personal level of readiness or on the availability of playing time based on the makeup of the roster—or the past few drafts have simply been one big coincidence.
Now that the stage has been set, it’s time to answer the question. If you could add any player coming out in this draft with the objective of helping the Steelers win the Super Bowl during the 2017 season, what would your selection be? Feel free to offer multiple names if you don’t feel like saying Myles Garrett.
