The Pittsburgh Steelers have been praised almost unanimously throughout this offseason for the work that they have done to build this 2023 team into a better unit than the one that came before. The fruits of that labor took shape in the completion of the initial 53-man roster, one that looks far more formidable than last year’s.
And one in the making of which they were able to trade away two players. Another player was claimed off waivers, and we can imagine others—including P Braden Mann—will find new homes shortly as well. This was a competitive group that they brought to Latrobe.
“There are a lot of guys who got cut that are talented, that can play. It’s just a lot of talent on the team”, former Steelers CB Bryant McFadden told his co-host and current Steelers CB Patrick Peterson on their All Things Covered podcast.
“I can’t recall a team being so deep at this point, where you’re like, ‘Man, I hope we keep this guy, I hope we keep that guy. I know we can’t, but I would love to keep that guy’”, he added. “There was a lot of that that really has been talked about leading up to this day”.
Among the Steelers’ moves to trim down to a 53-man roster was a pair of trades to send former starting offensive linemen away for draft compensation. In sending 30-game starter Kevin Dotson to the Los Angeles Rams, they raised two mid-round picks by swapping selections. They got a sixth-round pick back for 15-game starter Kendrick Green, who is in just his third season.
Other significant players who failed to make the 53-man roster include NT Breiden Fehoko, a fourth-year veteran with several hundred defensive snaps under his belt, though they re-signed him to the practice squad. A pair of their own draft picks, fifth-year TE Zach Gentry and third-year DB Tre Norwood, also failed to make the cut.
Interestingly, in order to accommodate a roster with six wide receivers, seven defensive linemen, and 11 defensive backs, the Steelers opted to retain only eight linebackers, for now. The most notable excisions there were on the inside with Tanner Muse, who was claimed off waivers, and Nick Kwiatkoski, a former starter who is on the downside of his career, a possible candidate to re-sign to the practice squad.
One of former Steelers head coach Chuck Noll’s famous sayings was that the toughest thing about cutting players is stopping. That certainly wasn’t the case for current head coach Mike Tomlin, who has one of the most competitive rosters from top to bottom that he has had in some time, perhaps in his entire career.
