With free agency less than a week away, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ draft needs could shift depending on their free agent signings and the caliber of those signings. That being said, it seems inevitable that the Steelers will be drafting a defensive lineman with one of their first two picks. Some will argue that the Steelers must improve their offense with a wide receiver, but the draft is unusually rich in the trenches, and there is no doubt that it’s among the team’s biggest needs.
While the Steelers haven’t made it a habit over the years to trade up or down in the first round of the draft, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Steelers insider Gerry Dulac thinks they should be considering a trade up to secure a top d-lineman.
He was asked in his weekly P-G Steelers chat which position would have to fall to the Steelers to make them move away from defensive line in the first round.
“It would only be a WR for that to happen, and I don’t think that will happen,” Dulac wrote. “Quite the contrary, the Steelers should be [thinking] trade up to get the DL they really like.”
Predicting the pecking order of the top defensive linemen in this draft is difficult. Mason Graham is expected to be the first one off the board, but there is an argument to be made for anybody after that point. Would the next guy be Kenneth Grant, or maybe Walter Nolen? I have even seen people make the argument for Derrick Harmon, Darius Alexander, or Tyleik Williams.
If the Steelers have a guy rated well above the rest and it gets to pick 15 or 16, I could see them potentially moving up from No. 21. They need a long-term solution with Larry Ogunjobi likely to be a cap casualty and Cameron Heyward entering the final leg of his career.
Otherwise, I would just let the board fall how it may. They did that last year and landed Troy Fautanu, whom many thought would go much higher in the first round. There are simply too many needs to give up valuable draft capital. Ideally the Steelers could walk out of the first two days of the draft with a defensive lineman, wide receiver, and maybe a cornerback or running back. Trading up in the first round would put that at risk.
The Steelers have only traded up in the first round four times since 2001, though two of those have occurred over the last six years with trades up for Devin Bush Jr. and Broderick Jones. Omar Khan has only been in charge of the selections for two drafts so far, and he made the move for Jones, so there is some precedent on him making an aggressive move.
If they can make a similar move to the 2023 trade that landed the Steelers Broderick Jones, in which they only gave up a fourth-round pick, I could get behind that idea. The Denver Broncos, Seattle Seahawks, Cincinnati Bengals, and Arizona Cardinals could all be in the market for a defensive lineman and those are four of the five teams with picks leading up to the Steelers at No. 21.
