Steelers mock draft: 5 first-round targets for Pittsburgh
By Tommy Jaggi
The Steelers have a number of pressing needs to address next offseason. Here are five players Pittsburgh could target early in the 2022 NFL Draft.
I know we are less than halfway through the 2021 NFL season, but we are starting to get a very good idea of what will be Pittsburgh’s biggest positions of need in the upcoming 2022 NFL Draft. Sadly, they have ample needs and not enough resources to fill them all after trading all of their day-three draft capital away.
The Steelers are going to have to think long and hard about which position is most important to fix right away and how they should spend their first-round pick in next year’s draft. As of now, here are five players Pittsburgh could target with what is currently looking to be a mid-first-round pick:
Steelers could target IOL Kenyon Green
Pittsburgh could really use an elite offensive tackle prospect. Unfortunately, just one of those exists in this draft class and Alabama’s Evan Neal is probably going to be long gone before the Steelers are on the clock. While not ideal, I can see the Steelers taking the best available player on the offensive line — even though that is likely to come in the interior.
Kenyon Green is a very good football player for Texas A&M. At 6’4” and 325 pounds, Green is a five-star recruit with impressive family bloodlines (both of his parents were NCAA athletes). Green has remarkable core strength but only average lateral movement stills and less than ideal length, so he will be limited to being a guard.
Green played right next to Dan Moore Jr. on Texas A&M’s offensive line and seems like he could be a candidate to rejoin his old teammate next April. Trai Turner is likely just a stop-gap option for this team — and one that needs to be upgraded. Kenyon Green could give Pittsburgh’s offensive line a boost moving forward.