Why Steelers were forced to pull the trigger on Melvin Ingram trade

The Pittsburgh Steelers were forced to deal Melvin Ingram just before the NFL trade deadline, but here’s why they didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. 

In the days leading up to the NFL trade deadline, reports surfaced that Melvin Ingram wasn’t happy in his role with the Pittsburgh Steelers. It didn’t take long for trade rumors to circulate and soon become reality.

On the morning of November 2nd, Ian Rapoport confirmed that Ingram was being traded to the Kansas City Chiefs in exchange for a sixth-round draft choice. Though Ingram has been a very solid free-agent signing, this move hardly caught us by surprise.

Against the Seattle Seahawks just before the bye week, Ingram trotted onto the field for just 17 defensive snaps (26 percent). Following Pittsburgh’s Week 7 bye, Ingram participated in practice on Wednesday and Thursday but was abruptly ruled out. At the time, I speculated that it was because the Steelers wanted to make sure he didn’t get injured before they shipped him away.

This theory proved to be correct, and Ingram is now with a new squad. While we would like to say that the Steelers made some excellent move trading a backup player with just 11 games remaining on his contract for draft capital, what choice did they have?

Melvin Ingram forced the Steelers hand

This is hardly the first time that disgruntled Steelers players have forced the hand of the front office in recent years. We all know how ugly things got with Antonio Brown, and we were begging for him to be moved by the end after sabotaging his trade value. While Ingram’s distractions where nowhere near the same degree, Mike Tomlin and Kevin Colbert weren’t about to find out how much worse they could get.

After thinking that he was going to be part of a heavy rotation at outside linebacker, Ingram was clearly upset when the team favored Alex Highsmith across from T.J. Watt. As a result, the former three-time Pro Bowler played just a combined 88 defensive snaps since Week 4.

It’s understandable as to why Ingram no longer wanted to be in Pittsburgh. After all, he’s trying to play for a new contract in 2022 and he believes he should be a starter. While Pittsburgh could have let the clock tick on the trade deadline and keep Ingram on their team this year, this could have caused some big issues in the locker room.

Instead of carrying a disgruntled player on their roster for the remainder of the season, the team was forced to trade him for whatever they could get just hours before the NFL trade deadline — in this case, it was a sixth-round pick.

Melvin Ingram was having a strong 2021 season for the Steelers, and the ideal situation would have been to keep him as the team tries to make a playoff push this year. However, with his usage dwindling and Ingram wanting out, the team knew that their only option was to send him away before things got ugly.