With the Steelers’ 2023 offseason underway following a disappointing season that came up just short of reaching the playoffs, it’s time to begin reloading, through the free agency process, through the draft, and perhaps even through trade.
This is now a young team on the offensive side of the ball, though one getting older on defense, and both sides could stand to be supplemented robustly, including in the trenches—either one. Changes have been made to the coaching staff, even if not all of the desired ones, as the roster continues to renew with the weeks ticking by.
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 still need to add another capable slot cornerback.
Explanation: While they didn’t add one via the draft, the Steelers did sign veteran Chandon Sullivan while the draft was going on. Yet soon after that they released Arthur Maulet. The plan seems to be to allow Patrick Peterson to take on as much of the slot role as he can handle, but most of the other cornerbacks on the top half of the roster are not position-flexible pieces, exclusive to the outside.
Buy:
Just stop for a second and think about this. The Steelers’ plan for defending in the slot is a 33-year-old veteran outside cornerback who has never meaningfully played inside, and a guy who was available to sign during the draft.
They obviously need to bring in another slot cornerback. In an ideal world, it would be somebody who would be a better starting candidate than any that they currently have. But at the bare minimum, they need depth that isn’t just whatever they happen to have on the roster.
The Steelers have talked about the options they have, but surely they can do better than Duke Dawson and a safety like Elijah Riley. With all the tinkering they’ve been doing elsewhere on the roster—the Steelers have signed four free agent inside linebackers alone—it’s kind of astonishing they seem up to this point to have been content with the work they’ve done here, resting on a very big assumption.
Sell:
The Steelers have shown that you don’t need big names to get effective play in the slot. Guys like Mike Hilton and Arthur Maulet managed to handle the role in recent years, and there are always alternatives you can explore with three-safety packages, something they want to do with Keanu Neal and Damontae Kazee.
While it wouldn’t be a bad idea by any means to keep looking here, they’re not in a position in which they have some glaring hole that will inevitably prove an Achilles’ heel if they don’t plug it. Chandon Sullivan is at least on par with a guy like Maulet, and in Peterson’s case, there are plenty of cornerbacks of his stature who late in their career successfully transitioned into work in the slot.
The biggest issue with making that move is above the neck, and that’s not going to be a problem for him. The fact that he has fully embraced it is a big point to consider as well. If anything, he’s excited about it, even seeming to imply it might not just help but encourage him to play longer. Realistically, anything they’re going to find now would be equivalent to the guys they already have like Dawson.
