3 mistakes Steelers made regarding the offensive line in 2021

Steelers should have drafted OL in the first round of 2021

Najee Harris is going to be a good player for the Steelers, but no matter how you slice it, you can’t argue that he was the right selection with the 24th overall pick in the 2021 NFL Draft. People get way too hung up on the fact that he earned 1,667 scrimmage yards last season. It required him 381 touches to do so, and the efficiency was pretty when it came to both running the ball and catching it out of the backfield.

While I don’t doubt that Harris could be one of the better running backs in the NFL, a RB is only as good as the offensive line blocking for him. That proved to be the case again last season. During the draft, I was banging the table for the Steelers to draft an offensive lineman in a loaded OL class.

Players like Landon Dickerson or Creed Humphrey would have been excellent choices here — especially after Pouncey and DeCastro had just recently retired. Instead, Pittsburgh took a position that has steeply decreased in value over the years and tried to fix their offensive line woes with discount players like Dan Moore and Kendrick Green in the mid-rounds of the drat.

The Steelers are going to run Najee Harris into the ground by the end of his rookie contract. Meanwhile, Humphrey graded out as the number one center in the league as a rookie, via PFF. An offensive lineman would have helped by more time for the quarterback and would improve the efficiency in the running game by default.