Pittsburgh Steelers general manager Omar Khan has already had one of the craziest offseasons in recent memory and the calendar just turned to April. He started the offseason with only one quarterback under contract for the 2024 season: Kenny Pickett. Now he has three quarterbacks under contract, and none of them are named Pickett.
It’s hard not to be excited about the upgrades at the quarterback position. The Steelers did not get much in the way of production at quarterback outside of Mason Rudolph at the very end of the season. If they had gotten even competent quarterback play over the course of 2023, it’s possible that the season would not have ended in Buffalo. So if Russell Wilson even replicates his 2023 numbers here in Pittsburgh, the Steelers will have a vastly improved offense.
However, the need for this level of upgrade in a single offseason means something went terribly wrong previously. The root of the problem that Omar Khan is trying to fix can be traced back to the end of the Ben Roethlisberger era in Pittsburgh.
Roethlisberger is essentially a shoo-in for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but he was on the decline physically late in his career. Despite that, the Steelers continued to support Roethlisberger in an attempt to push for a third Super Bowl victory during his career.
The organization invested multiple draft picks and money in free agency over Roethlisberger’s final seasons in an effort to shore up the offensive line and surround him with talent for that last push. That includes drafting players who are no longer with the team like WR Chase Claypool, RB Anthony McFarland Jr., and guards Kevin Dotson and Kendrick Green. Thankfully, RB Najee Harris and TE Pat Freiermuth were part of those draft classes as well, so not all was lost.
What wasn’t part of those last couple of seasons was a plan of succession at the quarterback position. The Steelers drafted Mason Rudolph in the third round of the 2018 NFL Draft. He was the last quarterback the Steelers drafted during Roethlisberger’s career. That’s in spite of Roethlisberger missing the vast majority of the 2019 season with an elbow injury to his throwing arm.
That means the Steelers went all-in on Roethlisberger for both the 2020 and the 2021 seasons despite him suffering a season-ending injury in 2019. A further complication was the Steelers’ lack of a first-round pick in 2020. They traded that pick away even after learning they would be without Roethlisberger for the rest of the season so they could acquire S Minkah Fitzpatrick.
Even without a first-round pick in the 2020 draft, the Steelers were still in prime position to draft a quarterback in the second round. However, rather than take Jalen Hurts, the Steelers took WR Chase Claypool. Hurts thought the Steelers were going to draft him, but the organization opted to go with a wide receiver to help Roethlisberger.
Hurts was drafted four spots after Claypool by the Philadelphia Eagles where he helped lead the Eagles to an NFC Championship in 2022. Claypool is now on his third team (and showing up on a Canadian Football League exclusive negotiation list).
Neither the 2020 nor the 2021 draft classes were enough to propel the Steelers and Roethlisberger back to the Super Bowl. The Steelers went 12-4 in 2020 and hosted the Cleveland Browns in the Wild Card round but lost 48-37. The next season, Pittsburgh went 9-7-1 and went on the road against the Kansas City Chiefs and lost 42-21.
So when Roethlisberger retired after the season, all the investment into the offense was in vain. The organization did not win another Super Bowl (or even make another one) despite the emphasis on surrounding Roethlisberger with talent. Then you factor in how the players they drafted fared, and the picture looks even worse.
To compound the lack of another championship, the Steelers had no answer at the most important position in football. The Steelers under former general manager Kevin Colbert failed to succeed at their mission of short-term success while failing to set the team up for the future.
So after the conclusion of the 2023 season, Omar Khan and the Steelers set out to find answers. That began with finding competition for Pickett. When that became Russell Wilson, the picture changed dramatically. Within a week of coming to an agreement with Wilson, the Steelers traded Pickett to the Eagles then traded for Justin Fields. The Steelers also signed veteran backup Kyle Allen to bring the quarterback room back up to three.
The efforts haven’t stopped there, either. The Steelers have scouted in person (or will be meeting with) multiple quarterbacks in the draft process: Michael Penix Jr. from Washington, Carter Bradley from South Alabama, and reportedly Kory Curtis, formerly of Ohio State and Gannon who went undrafted in 2023.
Khan is taking as many shots at the quarterback position as he can without sacrificing the other needs of the team. It’s the exact opposite approach of his predecessor Kevin Colbert at the end of Roethlisberger’s career.
There’s no guarantee that any of these moves by Omar Khan will work out. But to mix my sports references, you can’t hit a home run (or even a single) if you don’t swing the bat. No one is going to accuse Khan of not swinging the bat when it comes to quarterbacks this offseason.
Now, you can make the argument that Colbert took some mighty big swings in 2022. He signed a veteran quarterback in Mitch Trubisky and drafted Pickett. However, the damage was already done at that point. Both of those moves were reactionary and not planned from a position of strength.
If Pickett worked out, would this have been a different conversation? Absolutely. However, you can look back at Pickett’s college career and see the questions that turned into negative answers in his first two seasons in Pittsburgh. That swing turned out to be nothing but a loud and long out to continue the baseball analogy.
The Steelers under Colbert simply waited too long to start addressing the quarterback position in the twilight of Roethlisberger’s Hall of Fame career. What could have been carefully planned instead turned into a Hail Mary that fell incomplete. Now Omar Khan has to craft his strategy to figure out the quarterback problem, and we can see that strategy coming into focus.
