5 Steelers Legends we wish we could bring back in their prime in 2023

If there is one downside to Steelers football, it is that, at some point, your Pittsburgh heroes eventually get old and retire. However, at some point, all fans are like, if only this player or that one could come out of retirement.

Everyone has their favorites, and make no doubt, not a day goes by in their careers where we wish they could play forever. No matter how hard we wish, it never happens. However, let’s suppose we had a magic wand and could roll back the years for five players, and bring them out of retirement, and put them on the 2023 Steelers, to get them to the Superbowl.

There have been many talented Steelers over the years. However, while any of them could be credible choices, let’s look at it from the perspective of where is one deficiency on the current Steelers team and which one specific player could we bring back to propel the Steelers to a championship.

So within this, as much Ben Roethlisberger or Terry Bradshaw could be on this list, it would be to solely replace Kenny Pickett, but the quarterback, you could argue, is not one of the major team deficiencies. Perhaps at the end of the season, we could be having a different conversation about Kenny Pickett’s abilities, but for now, he has a lot of growth potential this season. Although having Big Ben on the bench would be a nice backup in case of an injury. But we couldn’t play both, so past quarterbacks will not be considered.   

A few other players who will not make this list is Heath Miller. Yes, he was one of the best tight ends to ever play, but the Steelers have four solid tight ends in Darnell Washington, Pat Freiermuth, Zach Gentry, and Connor Heyward, thus while it would be nice to bring him back, his addition will not add more at that position to get the Steelers to a championship. The same applies to Jerome Bettis and Franco Harris. Since the Steelers have Najee Harris, it’s unlikely that substituting one of those two for Najee would change much. Though seeing Bettis or Franco run behind Broderick Jones, well, that would be fun.

So here are the five Steelers that would propel the Steelers to a Superbowl if we could bring them out of retirement.