The regular season marks the culmination of an extensive investigation into who your team will be that year. By this point, you’ve gone through free agency, the draft, training camp, and the preseason. You feel good in your decisions insofar as you can create clarity without having played meaningful games. But there are still plenty of uncertainties that remain, whether at the start of the regular season or the end, and new ones continually develop over time.
That is what I will look to address in our Buy or Sell series. In each installment, I will introduce a topic statement and weigh some of the arguments for either buying it (meaning that you agree with it or expect it to be true) or selling it (meaning you disagree with it or expect it to be false).
The range of topics will be intentionally wide, from the general to the specific, from the immediate to that in the far future. And as we all tend to have an opinion on just about everything, I invite you to share your own each morning on the topic statement of the day.
Topic Statement: The Steelers should add a veteran and a rookie quarterback this offseason.
Explanation: For the first time in nearly two decades, the Steelers are searching for a franchise quarterback. There is a myriad of ways of acquiring a franchise quarterback in any given offseason. Theoretically, exploring more than one simultaneously increases your chances.
Buy:
This year’s draft class doesn’t appear to be full of prospects that will explode onto the scene right away as a rookie. They look more likely players who would benefit more from developing for a year or two before they have to start. Having an established veteran present in the room would help the Steelers compete now and would also play a role in the development of their young quarterback.
There’s no reason that the Steelers should discard this season. They have talent, as long as they can stay healthy. A few key upgrades this offseason and, barring the quarterback position, there’s no reason that they can’t compete.
Somebody like Teddy Bridgwater or Marcus Mariota would give Mike Tomlin the mobile veteran that he wants while a rookie, likely taken at least by the end of day two, no later, would have the opportunity to observe for a year. Hey, it worked for Patrick Mahomes.
Sell:
Drafting a quarterback in the first round this year will merely set the franchise back, because there isn’t a rookie in this class that is going to led any team to a Super Bowl. Either go with Mason Rudolph for a year or bring in a veteran who could play for a couple of years while you keep looking for your next starter.
The organization would be much better served by drafting an offensive lineman, or even a front seven defender, in the first round over somebody like Kenny Pickett or Matt Corral, the two quarterbacks who seem to have been mocked to them the most often so far.
