Even after some notable moves, there were others made league-wide that would have improved the Steelers both this season and beyond.
With limited cap space and obvious holes on the roster, the Steelers entered into the offseason with a lot of uncertainty as to how to fill out their roster. After the new CBA was passed, the Steelers conducted a flurry of inhouse cuts and restructures to clear the necessary cap space. With that newfound cap, the Steelers retained Bud Dupree, traded for Chris Wormley, and signed free agents Derek Watt, Stefan Wisniewski, and Eric Ebron. Overall, it was a productive period that helped set the team up before the draft.
I can do it better though. While it was a very typical free agency for the Steelers, there were moves made around them that would have been more beneficial to the team both this year and long term. While they say hindsight is 20/20, these were all players that had logical fits on the team yet still signed elsewhere.
No one knows if the Steelers pursued these players. Perhaps they did and their deal wasn’t good enough, or maybe they determined the fit wasn’t right. In this redo situation though, I’m in charge of dolling out the free-agent contracts though. While the Steelers did a good job of filling out the roster, there were a few good deals that the team didn’t make.
Important to note is most of these contracts were 1-year “prove it” deals, a style of a deal the Steelers don’t usually make. To be thorough with this fantasy scenario, I’ll be constructing any deal made like the Steelers would for the value that the players ultimately signed for on the open market.