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

Steelers mock draft Round 6: Omar Speights, LB, LSU

Truthfully, it's not unreasonable to expect the Steelers to hope for better luck at inside linebacker next year and make their only move at inside linebacker late in the draft. After all, the timing of the injuries to Cole Holcomb and Kwon Alexander was mostly a weird case of considerable bad luck. Overall, if those two are healthy, alongside Elandon Roberts, the off-ball backers aren't bad.

However, the Steelers need to groom someone other than their pet project in Mark Robinson to be ready to be a long-term starter as a three-down, off-ball backer who commands the defense. Omar Speights isn't likely to be that guy, nor anyone this late in the draft - as Robinson's lack of contribution defensively shows.

Steelers mock draft Round 7: Caeden Wallace, OT, Penn State

It's tough to lay out a nightmare scenario in the seventh round, so the bold thing to do is buckle down on not taking a center in this draft and instead take an offensive tackle that won't have any more chance to unseat Dan Moore Jr. than anyone else currently on the roster. Realistically, Wallace would be fine depth at a position that will need it with Chukwuma Okorafor searching for greener pastures.

The nightmare is over. Thankfully the Steelers will be a prepared bunch when the NFL Draft arrives in April. We've already seen moves that indicate that Khan and his staff are focused on improving the Steelers roster, hopefully, that includes aggressively upgrading positions of need.

Of course, this mock draft doesn't have the benefit of seeing what moves Khan will make with the extra cap space in free agency to do so. As we saw last year, the Steelers will want the roster in a space to take the best player available instead of desperately grasping at hope as this mock draft intended to display.