If there’s one thing to ding the Pittsburgh Steelers for in the 2025 NFL Draft, it would be passing on a quarterback until the sixth round. The quarterback position has been their biggest Achilles’ heel as a franchise in recent years. There is no bright future without solving that issue. ESPN analyst Mina Kimes was hoping they’d be more aggressive in addressing that issue.
“I would’ve taken a quarterback earlier, just to be blunt,” Kimes said via ESPN’s NFL Live. “I don’t begrudge them skipping on quarterback in the first round. I actually love the Derrick Harmon pick…But after that, they had a couple of opportunities, I think, to take a swing on one. Jalen Milroe in the third round, they took a running back Kaleb Johnson. And then in the fourth, instead of taking [Shedeur] Sanders, they took Jack Sawyer.”
I don’t disagree with her line of thinking in the slightest, but the way the board broke for quarterbacks was not ideal for the Steelers to take a big swing. They had their choice in the first round of any quarterback not named Cam Ward, and they passed. They clearly weren’t in love with Jaxson Dart or Tyler Shough enough at No. 21 overall, or they would have picked them.
The Steelers have really gotten back to emphasizing drafting for value. Taking the best football player available was always a part of the Steelers’ formula for success until the later years of Ben Roethlisberger’s career. They started reaching for positions of need in an attempt to capitalize on Roethlisberger’s window. It didn’t work, and it really set them back.
If they didn’t have a conviction on Shough or Dart at No. 21, I can’t knock them for that. And Kimes didn’t either. Her biggest issue was the third and fourth-round approach. The two quarterbacks that could have made sense at No. 83 overall would have been Shedeur Sanders or Jalen Milroe.
Milroe is a lottery ticket. There is high-end potential, but the floor is also extremely low as an NFL quarterback. His inaccuracy can’t be downplayed. Without a second-round pick, the Steelers would have been in a tough spot to address their other needs. Kaleb Johnson was sitting there at No. 83, which is a great value at a position of need. It’s hard to knock that philosophy.
The league gave a resounding answer on what they think of Sanders as a quarterback. If the Steelers valued him as highly as what was reported leading up to the draft, he would be in black and gold right now. He instead ended up falling to the fifth round.
Should the Steelers have taken a swing in the fourth round instead of Jack Sawyer? An argument can certainly be made there, but the Steelers had Sawyer much higher up on their board.
“You gotta take some swings,” Kimes said. “People say, well, they can go for it next year. Frankly, we’re talking about a team that never picks in the top 10 because they don’t lose that many games, and they’re also in a division that just loaded up on draft picks for next year. So I don’t see that as a plan…I just wish they had been a little bit more aggressive at the position.”
I don’t disagree with her logic. But it’s not worth taking a swing when the pitches are being tossed into the dirt.
Reaching for positions of need got the Steelers into this position in the first place. Had they spent the last decade drafting the best players available, they probably wouldn’t be in this purgatory.
Instead, they found great value in Ohio State QB Will Howard. Our Alex Kozora gave him a second-round grade, and Jon Gruden was also very high on his potential in his episode of Gruden’s QB Class.
They are much better set up to take the swing next year with significantly more draft capital.
