Pittsburgh Steelers are set up to trade up in 2019 NFL Draft

The Pittsburgh Steelers have engaged in several trades this offseason, some reluctantly. What they have might not be much, but can be used to trade up.

So that was a disaster. You know exactly what I’m talking about. The Steelers lost maybe the best wideout in the league and one of the best right tackles. In return, they got a few mediocre draft picks. They can turn that into more though.

How did we get here? As far as Gilbert is concerned, he was old and injury prone. So the Steelers got a sixth-round pick from Arizona for him. As far as Brown, he is older of course, but he still should have brought in a low first-round pick or a high second. Unfortunately for the Steelers, however, Brown tanked his trade value by showing what an off the field liability he is. He vetoed a trade to the Bills, he put the lack of Steelers leverage on blast, and the Steelers front office just wants the drama to stop at this point so they settled for a third and fifth-round pick.

Any compensatory picks coming for Le’Veon Bell won’t be until next year so that leaves them with the following picks:

• First-Round, Pick 20
• Second-Round, Pick 52
• Third-Round, Pick 66 (from Oakland)
• Third-Round, Pick 83
• Fourth-Round, Pick 122
• Fifth-Round, Pick 141 (from Oakland)
• Sixth-Round, Pick 174 or 179 (from Arizona)
• Sixth-Round, Pick 175 (from Oakland)
• Sixth-Round, Pick 192
• Seventh-Round, Pick 219 (from Tampa Bay)

Just as a reminder, the Steelers lost their own 5th round pick and gained Oakland’s 6th round pick as part of the deal to obtain Ryan Switzer. The Steelers swapped seventh-round draft picks with Tampa Bay as part of the deal to get J.J. Wilcox.

So this here where the Steelers stand.

The two third-round picks are a nice thing to have in a rebuilding year. They’ll probably have two more next year with a compensatory pick. A first round pick would have been nice though.

Let’s look at the bright side. The Steelers have the 20th pick in the first-round and in the second-round. Those are better picks than they’ve had for a while. Then in the third round, on top of their own pick, they’ve got the Raiders pick which is almost a second-round pick. Same goes for the fifth-round pick which might as well be a late fourth-round pick.

Then we get to that big cluster of sixth-round picks. Why? They don’t all turn out to be Antonio Brown. They will more likely be a Colin Holba or a Travis Feeney or a Jordan Zumwalt. Let’s not discount the value you can get in the sixth-round though. Contributors like Vince Williams and Anthony Chickillo have also come out of the sixth-round.

Still, the Steelers have lost stars. You don’t replace stars with contributors and expect to maintain the same level of play. The solution is obvious, trade up.

Those gratuitous late round picks are ammo to trade up. The Steelers could trade up in the first-round to get a great player they’d have on the wish list if they weren’t always in the bottom half of the draft. Alternatively, they could trade up in the second round to a second-round pick high enough to get a first-round caliber player. They can trade a sixth-round, or because they have such a high sixth-round pick they can lose their fifth-round pick and barely lose in quality of available player by the time they get to their next pick. They could even trade one of their third-round picks. The combinations are endless.

The Steelers should have a quality corner available at the 20th spot, but they might want to trade up a couple spots for a Devin Bush or Devin White at linebacker or Marquise Brown for wide out. If one of those players fall to them, they could trade up in the second-round. The third-round pick could free them up in the first two rounds to take advantage of a value pick that drops way too low that they don’t necessarily need since you can use that extra Day Two pick to fill a hole.

So, although the Steelers really had a disappointing result from trading Antonio Brown, as many have pointed out, and though acknowledging that was largely because of Brown himself both taking away any leverage the Steelers had and making himself less desirable to other teams is hardly consolation, the draft picks today might not be the same at the end of draft day.