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: The Steelers will lose director of pro player personnel Brandon Hunt to an outside promotion this offseason or next.
Explanation: Hunt has been taking multiple interviews this offseason, more than typical, which could be an indication that he doesn’t expect to get the Steelers’ general manager job—and thus signaling to him that it’s time to move on, since Kevin Colbert’s successor is likely going to be around for a while.
Buy:
Read the tea leaves. If Hunt was going to get the job, or at least that there was a strong possibility, it would known by now. The fact that he keeps taking interviews is a pretty strong indication that he knows he’s not going to be Kevin Colbert’s successor.
And professionally speaking, that means it’s time to move on, plain and simple. There isn’t any room for him to move upward if he doesn’t get the general manager job, not in Pittsburgh. They don’t have an assistant general manager, and Colbert has been here for over two decades. The fact that he’s likely to retain some type of role makes it much less likely that they would just create some role for Hunt just to try to appease him into staying.
Sell:
Hunt is taking more job interviews probably because he is receiving more interview requests—and specifically interview requests during the time of year when teams can’t block other teams from interviewing their personnel for jobs. He’s more in demand than ever before, as a finalist for the Steelers’ own general manager job.
While that does increase the likelihood of him leaving within the next year or two, that doesn’t mean he will. For starters, he still could easily be the next general manager. They had him following Colbert on the Pro Day circuit this year even though his specialization is pro talent, not college talent. It was like a GM-in-training month. That’s a bigger indication of what the team thinks than the fact that he’s taking interviews.
