Steelers Nightmare Mock Draft: Pittsburgh leaves the draft worse than they arrived

It's impossible for any mock draft to please every reader, so why not swing for the opposite effect and make everyone cringe instead?

The 2023 NFL Draft class for the Pittsburgh Steelers was praised in many ways, most notably in addressing core needs such as offensive tackle and cornerback and finding value with players like Keeanu Benton and Darnell Washington. Pittsburgh even got a bit of a surprise in the performance of Nick Herbig.

Omar Khan and his front office staff have already built a reputation for being pretty good at this whole team-building thing. Truthfully, many of the roster's current issues relate to selections made by Kevin Colbert as he closed out his otherwise stellar career.

But what if that were suddenly not the case? What if the Steelers managed to make the worst decision possible with all seven of their draft picks this April? Well, I took a stab at seeing what that would look like.

The primary objective of this nightmare mock draft is not to simply take bad players too high or to take positions the team clearly doesn't need. It's more of a practice at approaching the 2024 NFL Draft with the wrong focus, selecting the wrong players while simultaneously foregoing the right ones. I did use a mock draft simulator to help fuel the nightmare, taking note of where certain critical prospects fell around the Steelers' picks. In some scenarios, a player Pittsburgh could be able to get is picked a few picks too soon, leading to a poor decision on the other end.

Steelers mock draft Round 1: Bo Nix, QB, Oregon

While many Steeler fans want a new quarterback other than Kenny Pickett or Mason Rudolph, Bo Nix is one of the least favorable options by the fanbase.

In a popular X post circulating the Steelers fandom, fans are asked to eliminate one of nine potential 2024 starters for the team. Bo Nix was the second quarterback eliminated by participating fans. So, needless to say, this would be a nightmare scenario from the jump.

Nix's college football career was uncomfortably similar to Pickett's. He was average at best for the first several years of his career before maturing into a stronger player with an extra year of eligibility, eventually entering the Heisman Trophy conversation and subsequently a mid-to-late first-round quarterback. It would be equally bizarre to take Nix with the same selection as Pickett with the roster largely being in a similar state to when Pickett was drafted in the first place.

Drafting Nix is a bad idea for a plethora of reasons, but the most pressing is that Pickett or any viable replacement would be better suited to see this pick used to assist him on the offensive line.

Coincidentally, Oregon center Jackson Powers-Johnson was selected by the Los Angeles Chargers immediately after the Steelers. Boy would that sting.