One of the fairest critiques of the Pittsburgh Steelers and their strategy over the final stretch of Ben Roethlisberger’s career was their failure to prepare for life after he retired. Not only did they fail to invest in a quarterback ahead of time, but they also left the offensive side of the roster in ruins with a terrible situation for a rookie to step into. Relying on a rookie is hard enough to begin with but setting them up for failure almost ensures a negative result. That’s exactly what they got with Kenny Pickett.
Former Steelers OC Todd Haley joined the Kaboly + Mack podcast on YouTube this morning and discussed the difficult decision that teams have to make every year when they are good and have an aging quarterback on the roster and his experience with the Steelers in that regard.
“It’s really hard to transition from a Hall of Fame-type quarterback,” Haley said. “I’ve been in those meetings. I mean, you got Ben, he’s playing at a level [where] you feel like you can win it all if you can get past [Tom] Brady or whoever the players are. But you’re sitting there with the first-round pick. Are we taking T.J. Watt or are we looking to the future? That’s a really difficult thing when you’re a good team.”
Here is the list of quarterbacks the Steelers drafted over the second half of Roethlisberger’s career.
– Mason Rudolph: 2018 (Third Round)
– Joshua Dobbs: 2017 (Fourth Round)
– Landry Jones: 2013 (Fourth Round)
To be fair to the Steelers, Kevin Colbert had a first-round grade on Rudolph. I suppose you can make the argument that they were starting to prepare by the time 2018 came around, but they only took Rudolph because he fell to the third round. They didn’t get aggressive and take him in the first or second round, so their mindset obviously wasn’t on making sure they had a successor to Roethlisberger they could develop while he was still on the roster.
“It’s hard to pull the trigger,” Haley said. “The discussions were always had. There were times when I knew, say [Patrick] Mahomes’ year, hey this guy — he’d be pretty exciting to have around, but we need another big-time receiver, or we need a guard that can play. Whoever it is. It’s very easy to talk about for us on the outside and fans, but man, when you’re right there and you look at your team and you say we got a chance, it’s hard to pull the trigger on that.”
Hindsight is undefeated, so of course it’s easy to reflect on certain draft classes and think “what if?”
Keep in mind that Kevin Colbert and Mike Tomlin had the luxury of Roethlisberger for most of their careers. They weren’t well-versed on the annual quarterback carousel that some teams have to go through. Perhaps if they had more experience with that, they would have made a stronger push to draft Roethlisberger’s successor.
