The Steelers have made some draft mistakes in the past that they are still regretting.
The draft is a time of year that sees young men have their football dreams come true. It is always exciting for fans as they can watch players join the club live on TV. The event has become more and more hyped up over the last decade or two.
The history of the NFL did not make this draft event a spectacle until more recently. Now there are a bunch of news outlets covering this portion of the offseason for these NFL teams. The Steelers have become one of the best franchises at finding and developing talent during the seven rounds.
Their team construction has been leaning on the draft for many years. That success brings a lot of expectations along with it. Sometimes you just whiff on a pick and other times you make a home run selection. This article focuses on the biggest fails of this team throughout its history that they regret to this day.
The Steelers should never have taken Jarvis Jones in 2013
2013 was a transition period for the black and gold as their aging legendary defense was starting to wander into retirement. The Steelers needed to find some young talent and bring it onto the defensive side of the ball. That would be the best way of keeping this team competitive.
The club thought they did that by selecting Jarvis Jones, who was one of the best pass rushers in college football. There were different medical concerns that other teams did not like on his resume. Pittsburgh still took him and that led to a bust that has been one of the worst first-round picks for the franchise in recent history.
The Steelers bypassed Brett Favre and took Huey Richardson in 1991
This is where things could have gotten interesting for the Steelers. They just came out of the dreaded 80s decade that saw the team fall into obscurity. It was an odd time that saw Pittsburgh starting to grow something new.
Chuck Noll was entering his final season as the head coach for the franchise, and it was long overdue at this point. The team had been without steam for a while and could not stay competitive. The final first-round pick under Noll’s direction was one of the worst, if not the worst, busts in Steelers history.
Huey Richardson was a linebacker that many thought could become a defensive stalwart for the club. That never happened and he would be off Pittsburgh’s roster just one year after being their top selection. It was a new era with Bill Cowher coming in but cutting a first-round pick after one season is almost unheard of.
Things get worse in this scenario when you realize that Brett Favre went to the Falcons in the second round. That could have given the black and gold a future Hall of Famer at quarterback and catapulted them into Super Bowl contention. He could have turned out differently if he did not play for the Packers, but this is an interesting scenario that would have been fun to watch play out.
The Steelers should have never stuck with Mark Malone for so long
The end of the 70s dynasty happened as the star players began to retire during the early 80s. The Steelers began to fall into a funk as the team started losing games. Terry Bradshaw could not stay healthy, and Mark Malone was turned to often during those times.
Many held onto hope that Malone would make for an easy transition from Bradshaw. They wanted that to be true and wished they could stay competitive, but that did not happen. Unfortunately for the black and gold, this transition period was rocky and saw many quarterbacks start for them that lacked talent.
The main issue with Malone and his tenure with Pittsburgh was the number of chances that he was given to start for this team. Not just him but other players at the position should have been moved on from much sooner. That could have led to better options during draft classes in the 80s that the club missed out on.
Some of those names that they seemed disinterested in included the likes of future Hall of Famers at quarterback. Some notable signal callers that were some of the bests to ever play the game in the Steelers uniform just became a dream. Joe Montana, John Elway, and Dan Marino just to name a few.
The Steelers held onto Tim Worley over Emmitt Smith in the 1990 draft
Tim Worley joined the Steelers after they started to emerge out of the shadows of the dark 80s era. The team was starting to come together again, but there was still some work to do. Finding a reliable back was high on the things that the franchise needed at the time.
Drafting Worley in the first round was one of the biggest draft mistakes that the team has made. He struggled to put numbers up at the next level and that caused him to have a short career with Pittsburgh. Chuck Noll really struggled to find talent in the draft in his end years with the club.
He would only last six total seasons in the NFL with the majority in the black and gold. He lost favor on the team quickly, but not quick enough to look in another direction. The following draft could have let the Steelers get a future Hall of Famer at the position.
They could have traded up in the 1990 NFL Draft to select Emmitt Smith, but that did not happen. The team decided to stick to the guy they had and wait to see what their former first-round pick could do. This is a bit of a stretch in this scenario, but the world will never know now.
Passing on Dan Marino in the 1983 draft was the Steelers biggest regret
Many should have known that this would make the top choice on this list. This is something that the Steelers have been regretting since that draft year concluded. Many thought that Marino would be the guy if he fell to Pittsburgh, which he did. The local kid playing for his hometown team had a nice ring to it.
The scenario seemed like it was primed to happen but Chuck Noll and the black and gold shocked everyone by selecting a defensive tackle instead. This created some heartache among fans and created the biggest “what if” scenario in the history of the team. He would have been able to come in and make this club much more competitive than what happened in the 80s.
The Steelers stuck to their guns and tried to replicate what made them successful in the 70s by taking a defensive tackle to start their rebuild. That did not work this time around as that pick, Gabe Rivera, would have his career cut short by a car accident. Of course, the quarterback in question here went on to have one of the best careers by a player at his position ever.
No one will ever truly know what kind of success Marino and the Steelers might have had together. They could have been a terrible match, but this player was something special. It seems like this regret even piqued Pittsburgh’s interest by taking Kenny Pickett this time around.
The Steelers have made some bad moves in the draft, despite them being one of the best clubs to select players. They are not perfect and these are some of the worst regrets that the franchise holds.