Now that one full week of the new NFL year has come and gone, it’s a bit easier to sit back and digest some of the hectic moving and shaking that has happened among all 32 teams.
Free agency has been a whirlwind, as has the trade market. The Pittsburgh Steelers have been quite active in both, landing a number of key pieces in free agency and via trade, breaking from the norms of how the franchise tends to operate overall.
In turn, the Steelers also made the best free agency signing of the first week in the new league year, at least according to ESPN insider Jeremy Fowler.
In an article for ESPN.com Thursday, Fowler called linebacker Patrick Queen the best overall signing in the NFL in free agency.
“Pittsburgh gets a defensive cornerstone at a position that has long been depleted. Adding a fourth defensive star alongside T.J. Watt, Minkah Fitzpatrick and Cameron Heyward will pay off in the AFC North,” Fowler writes regarding the Queen signing. “And bonus points for stealing Queen from the rival Ravens. His contract is reasonable, as the Steelers can get out of it after one year and $13.84 million — though they won’t want to do that.”
Landing Queen on a three-year, $41 million deal was a heist by GM Omar Khan and the Steelers, no matter how you try and slice it. The Steelers were able to snag him away from the rival Baltimore Ravens, did so at an affordable cost, and in the process plugged a major hole on the defense.
That’s a win-win-win, period.
Queen joins a star-studded defense featuring outside linebacker T.J. Watt, safety Minkah Fitzpatrick and defensive lineman Cameron Heyward and gives the Steelers a playmaker in the middle of the defense.
Queen is coming off a 2023 season in which he recorded a career-high 133 tackles, nine tackles for loss, 3.5 sacks and one interception, earning second-team All-Pro accolades in the NFL.
It remains to be seen how Queen will fit into the Steelers’ 3-4 defensive scheme alongside the likes of Elandon Roberts and Cole Holcomb in 2024 and beyond, but it’s hard not to feel good about the signing that Khan and the Steelers made, quickly snatching up Queen on the open market. Hopefully he’s the answer the franchise has been searching for at inside linebacker for the last seven years or so.
