With the 2022 new league year, the questions will be plenty for quite a while, even as the Pittsburgh Steelers spend cash and cap space and use draft picks in an effort to find answers. We don’t know who the quarterback is going to be yet—even if we have a good idea. How will the offensive line be formulated? How will the secondary develop amid changes, including to the coaching staff? What does Teryl Austin bring to the table—and Brian Flores? What will Matt Canada’s offense look like absent Ben Roethlisberger?
These sorts of uncertainties are 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).
Topic Statement: Mitch Trubisky is better than any of the quarterbacks in this draft class.
Explanation: The quarterbacks in the 2022 NFL Draft class have been widely regarded as representing the weakest class in roughly a decade. Many even wonder if a ‘franchise’ quarterback like a Justin Herbert or a Lamar Jackson or a Patrick Mahomes will emerge from a group headlined by a low-ceiling Kenny Pickett and a low-floor Malik Willis.
Buy:
Nobody coming out of college this year is going to lead a team to a Super Bowl as a quarterback. Period. Now, Mitch Trubisky isn’t going to do that, either, but at least he has a winning record and has done enough to earn opportunities.
Trubisky is not a franchise quarterback, but he is capable of being a starter in the mold of a Ryan Fitzpatrick when a team doesn’t have ‘the guy’ available to them. And Desmond Ridder won’t be ‘the guy’. Nor will Kenny Pickett, nor Malik Willis, etc., etc., on down the line.
All of them have fatal flaws that will doom them at the next level. There will be more Josh Rosens than Josh Allens, players who proved their draft profiles incorrect in the wrong way. Willis’s high ceiling is intriguing, but his low floor is terrifying, and frankly, low-floor guys don’t work out all that often, especially at quarterback.
Sell:
Even if we’re talking about a weak draft class, on the other side of the aisle is Mitch Trubisky. This is a guy who went 6-3 in 2020 and then could only land a cheap backup job a year later. Frankly, the jury is out on him. He has some talent, but he has a low ceiling. He is a known quantity, including his limitations.
At least as it concerns the draft, there is the potential for something better. Guys like Ridder certainly have talent and qualities that intrigue you, even if, at the same time, they also offer things to be concerned about. Maybe none of them will win you a Super Bowl, but that’s the highest bar there is, and that’s not Trubisky. The Trubisky bar is just scraping together a winning record while not actively hurting the team too often. Most of the first-round quarterbacks this year at least have the high-side potential to achieve that.
