The Pittsburgh Steelers’ 2021 season is over, already eliminated from the postseason after suffering a 42-21 loss at the hands of Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs. They just barely made the postseason with a 9-7-1 record and a little help from their friends.
This is an offseason of major change, with the retirement of Ben Roethlisberger, the possible retirement of general manager Kevin Colbert, and the decisions about the futures of many important players to be made, such as Joe Haden, Stephon Tuitt, JuJu Smith-Schuster, and others.
Aside from exploring their options at the quarterback position, the top global priority, once again, figures to be addressing the offensive line, which they did not do quite adequately enough a year ago. Dan Moore Jr. looks like he may have a future as a full-time starter, but Kendrick Green was clearly not ready. Chukwuma Okorafor is heading into free agency, as is Trai Turner.
These are the sorts of topics among many others that we have been exploring on a daily basis and will continue to do so. Football has become a year-round pastime and there is always a question to be asked. There is rarely a concrete answer, but this is your venue for exploring the topics we present through all their uncertainty.
Question: How much is Mitchell Trubisky worth?
There aren’t too many quarterbacks that the Steelers haven’t been connected to at some point this offseason, either through free agency, trade, the draft, or resurrection via witchcraft, but some suggestions and reports feel more realistic than others.
One quarterback about whom reports, at least to me, feel more genuine than most, is the suggestion that the Steelers will be interested in trying to sign former second overall pick Mitchell Trubisky, who last season served as the backup to Josh Allen with the Buffalo Bills on just a one-year, $2.5 million contract.
Although he threw only eight passes last season, even Bills general manager Brandon Beane acknowledged in speaking to reporters at the Combine yesterday that there is a market for him and that it is probably unrealistic for them to expect to be able to keep him.
Part of the reason that he earned just $2.5 million last season was, of course, because of the steep market crunch in 2021, with the salary cap tumbling sharply due to the economic ramifications felt by the pandemic the prior year. It resulted in many players settling for cheap one-year deals who would in any other offseason been signing healthy multi-year contracts.
But when it comes to Trubisky, how much is he actually going to be worth to teams later this month? There have been reports suggesting that he could land a contract valued eight or nine times more than he earned last season.
I can’t imagine that myself, and I would be surprised if he were offered even $10 million APY. Of course, I have been surprised before. But we’re not talking about a former hopeful franchise face who is coming off of a strong cameo season. He barely did anything in 2021. Literally threw eight passes, one of which was an ugly interception. There’s no reason to think that he has raised his market value over the course of the past year, unless you value proximity to an actually good quarterback as an asset.
