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: Will Kevin Colbert try to leave the Steelers ‘in good hands’ with a franchise quarterback before he steps down as general manager?
One way or another, this is going to be Kevin Colbert’s final offseason as general manager, and Ben Roethlisberger isn’t going to be coming back. Realistically, they probably don’t have a franchise quarterback on the roster.
Colbert himself has spoken multiple times during the offseason about the importance of not overselling the available quarterbacks to yourself just because you don’t have one, but when you only have one last chance, that may be a harder task to achieve.
And perhaps that has something to do with the immense amount of rumors connecting the Steelers to a variety of available veteran quarterbacks on the market, whether via free agency or trade, from Aaron Rodgers to Mitchell Trubisky.
One thing that is not really an obstacle this year is the salary cap, and Colbert has also talked about how so much of their previous ‘approach’ to outside spending has been tied simply to their cap realities—in other words, as one might expect, they might be more active when they have more room to work.
It all makes you wonder, in the end, if Colbert will do whatever possible, within reason, to ensure that the Steelers have somebody at the quarterback position, other than Mason Rudolph or Dwayne Haskins, who could conceivably be viewed as a franchise option, whether that’s an established veteran, a priority free agent, or a first-round draft pick.
