Wednesday is an important day on the NFL calendar as any unrestricted free agent signed from this date forward will not count towards the 2019 compensatory draft pick calculation. What that means is that a good chunk of the compensatory draft picks for 2019 are now able to be speculated.
When it comes to the Pittsburgh Steelers, specifically, they’re not expected to receive a compensatory draft pick in 2019 based on what all has transpired during the main part of free agency.
During the 2018 free agent signing period, the Steelers signed three unrestricted free agents away from other teams in linebacker Jon Bostic and safeties Morgan Burnett and Nat Berhe. The Steelers also had one of their own unrestricted free agents, tackle Chris Hubbard, sign a lucrative deal with the Cleveland Browns early during the signing period. According to Nick Korte of Over the Cap, the Steelers free agent additions were essentially enough to cancel out the loss of Hubbard, who signed a five year, $36.5 million contract with the Browns in March.
The Steelers signed Bostic to a two year, $4 million contract in March and Burnett to a three year, $14.35 million not long after that. Berhe was signed to a one year, $880,000 contract in early April.
The NFL only awards a max of 32 compensatory draft picks every year and barring some sort of huge miscalculation by Korte, you can forget about the Steelers being awarded one next offseason. Should that ultimately wind up being the case, it would mark a second consecutive year that the Steelers have failed to receive a compensatory draft pick and that’s a rare feat for the organization.
