The Steelers recently announced that JuJu Smith-Schuster will be returning to Pittsburgh in 2021, but it’s going to come at the cost of Steven Nelson.
Steelers media was blown away on Friday afternoon after it was announced that wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster would be returning to Pittsburgh for the 2021 season. After reportedly receiving offers from other teams (including the Baltimore Ravens and Kansas City Chiefs), JuJu decided to return to the team that drafted him for at least one more season.
On paper, this deal looks terrific for the Steelers, as they signed their former Pro Bowl receiver to a one-year, $8 million deal. In comparison to what players like Nelson Agholor and Curtis Samuel went for on the market, this seems like a steal.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t come without a trade-off. In order to get JuJu under contract, Pittsburgh will either trade or cut cornerback Steven Nelson to make up the difference in cap space. Here are four reasons why swapping JuJu for Nelson could prove to be the wrong move by the Steelers:
Steelers have worse depth at cornerback than they do at receiver
I’m not complaining about JuJu’s contract number at all, and I give him credit for reportedly taking a little less money to stay in Pittsburgh this year, but one has to question what the Steelers were thinking with this. After Mike Hilton already walked in free agency, Pittsburgh’s willingness to cut or trade their starting right cornerback is mindblowing.
Cameron Sutton has re-signed with the team this offseason and is projected to slide into Hilton’s role as the nickel cornerback, but now what does Pittsburgh do? Do they play Sutton outside and force a player like James Pierre to slide into a nickel role? James Washington was a quality football player last year who didn’t see the field enough, and the Steelers still would have had three capable receivers without Smith-Schuster. It clearly looks like there is worse depth at cornerback than receiver, so the decision to bring back JuJu and move Nelson is a bit interesting.
The drop from JuJu Smith-Schuster to James Washington is not that great
Just when he thought he was finally going to get the opportunity to prove himself, the Steelers pull the rug out from under James Washington. The former second-round pick is certainly the quietest receiver of the group, but that doesn’t mean that he is significantly worse than the others. Washington was quite impressive when called upon last season and even came up with a few miraculous catches to help the Steelers close out some games.
Even after showing that he was capable of leading the team in receiving in 2019, Washinton went back to a reserve role last season and didn’t get a lot of opportunities in 2020. Instead of rolling with him as the team’s number three receiver in 2021, Pittsburgh elected to bring back JuJu at the expense of letting Steven Nelson go.
The Steelers normally operate under the ‘next man up’ mentality, but apparently, that didn’t apply in this case. Despite the impressive stretches we have seen from Washington, Chase Claypool, and Diontae Johnson, clearly, this wasn’t enough to make them feel comfortable with what they had. In addition, Pittsburgh always could have added a fourth receiver through the draft to help bolster this group instead of kicking a quality cornerback to the curb.
No proven player to start in Steven Nelson’s place
We just talked about how bad the cornerback depth is now that Hilton and Nelson will both be in different uniforms next year. Now the Steelers are left with a 32-year old Joe Haden and a quality, but relatively unproven cornerback in Cameron Sutton. Outside of these two guys, their next two players on the depth chart only have a combined 144 NFL defensive snaps in their careers.
The players I am referring to are former third-round pick, Justin Layne and former undrafted cornerback, James Pierre. Layne had some opportunities to showcase why he originally drew some buzz coming out of Michigan State in 2019, but he did not impress in limited action. Though he was a quality special teams player, Layne often looked lost on the field on defense.
Pierre is a player the Steelers are said to be very high on, but with just 27 career NFL snaps as a former undrafted cornerback who tested as a very poor athlete, how much confidence could they possibly have in him? Perhaps Pittsburgh knows much more about these two guys than what we witnessed in 2020 and maybe one of them will turn out to be a solid football player next year. However, it seems like an awfully big gamble to up all of your chips in that basket.
Steelers could be forced to draft cornerback early
With a number of pressing needs as we approach the 2021 NFL Draft, I would hate for the Steelers to be pigeonholed into drafting one specific position early, but it looks like that is exactly what could happen for Pittsburgh this year. While offensive line and running back are labeled as two of their greatest needs, we can certainly add cornerback to that list now.
Joe Haden could be in the last year of his NFL career, and we still don’t know how Cameron Sutton is going to perform in a full-time role with the team. Without a lot of reason to believe that anyone else will be the future at the position for Pittsburgh, they could look to draft a cornerback early – something that nobody really anticipated they would do in the 2021 NFL Draft.
Now it appears as though cornerback isn’t something we can rule out as early as the first round. Pittsburgh recently sent their brass to Georgia’s Pro Day, and perhaps they were really eying cornerbacks Eric Stokes and Tyson Campbell in the first two rounds. Despite all of their needs, the Steelers will certainly need to make an effort to sure up the cornerback position after deciding to keep JuJu instead of Steven Nelson.
In most years, JuJu Smith-Schuster would still be considered a bargain at just $8 million for one year, but the fact that his availability to the team comes at the expense of Steven Nelson is more than concerning to me. Let’s hope the Steelers know what they are doing here because I’m not convinced that the trade-off will be worth it.