It doesn’t come as much of a surprise, but with the Pittsburgh Steelers’ lack of notable free agents, the team is not likely to get any compensatory draft selections in the 2025 NFL Draft. Over the Cap’s Nick Korte looked at every team’s free agent situation after the franchise tag deadline and applied the likelihood of each team getting comp picks, and the Pittsburgh Steelers came in at “very low.”
“The Steelers do not have any notable pending UFAs, and their total number is on the low end at just 13,” Korte wrote. “Unless they feel this is a season to entirely sit out of free agency, there’s not likely much of a reason to prioritize comp picks this time around.”
Obviously, a team can get comp picks for losing free agents with a formula to determine what round pick (starting in the third) a team is awarded that depends on the caliber of free agents lost. But signing free agents can cancel out the players that a team lost, and with the Steelers lacking any notable free agents who would commend a lot of money on the open market, any comp pick they could initially get would likely be canceled out by their signings.
The Steelers aren’t going to sit out of free agency, especially with a number of holes on the current roster that they can shore up before the 2024 NFL Draft in late April. The possibility of a late-round comp pick in 2025 is certainly not worth sitting out of free agency, so it’s more than likely that the Steelers will not have any additional selections in the 2025 draft via comp picks.
One name the Steelers could look to bring in is Jerome Baker, who was released by the Miami Dolphins yesterday, to help round out the inside linebacker room. Alex Kozora’s wish list of offensive and defensive free agents is a good gauge of guys the Steelers might be looking to target in free agency.
The makeup of Pittsburgh’s roster could look a bit different with the legal tampering part of free agency starting on Monday, and the Steelers should be relatively active to plug some of their holes and gear up for a playoff run in 2024. That may come at the expense of a 2025 compensatory selection or two, but I don’t think that’s something the Steelers are too worried about given the way the roster is currently constructed to win.
