Heading into the 2024 season, wide receiver was indisputably the Steelers' biggest need. Omar Khan traded Diontae Johnson to the Panthers during the offseason and injuries to rookie Roman Wilson held him to just five snaps played in his first season. Meanwhile, the Mike Williams trade at the deadline didn't move the needle for Pittsburgh.
We are gearing up for the 2025 offseason, and receiver remains one of the greatest needs on the team. While options will be limited in free agency, the Steelers could look to the NFL Draft to fill the void.
Potential first-round candidates include Luther Burden, Emeka Egbuka, and Matthew Golden. But there's an even more obvious Steelers draft choice staring us in the face.
Steelers could target Michigan DT Kenneth Grant
After Pittsburgh's defense crumbled late in the season, an exhausted front seven allowed 299 rushing yards against the Baltimore Ravens in the Wild Card round of the playoffs. This unsurprisingly led to an early exit from the tournament.
If there's one thing we've learned about Art Rooney II, is that this team has a recency bias. After the running game failed the Steelers in 2020, Rooney expressed in his post-season presser how the rushing attack needed to improve. So what did they do? Pittsburgh drafted Najee Harris in the first round.
This year, there's much better reason to get behind a selection like Kenneth Grant.
Grant was a centerpiece of an outstanding defensive line at Michigan. Playing alongside highly-touted NFL Draft prospect Mason Graham, Grant was sometimes overlooked. Yet he's remarkably hard to miss.
At 6'3'' and 339 pounds, Grant has the prototype size for a nose tackle in the NFL and the strength to match. Grant can two-gap and bully offensive linemen at the point of attack while flashing the quickness to move laterally and make plays. As a pass rusher, Grant won't offer much at the next level, but his niche role is valuable as a run-stuffing interior defender.
Drafting Grant would allow Keenau Benton to move back to a more natural position. Benton is a better pass rusher than he is as a run defender, so spending another year at nose tackle is only going to stunt his development further. The 3-4 base combination of Heyward, Grant, and Benton would give Pittsburgh a potentially lethal group on the interior defensive line.
Grant is currently listed as the 25th-ranked player on the NFL Mock Draft Database's consensus board, and the Steelers hold the 21st overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft. It's early in the offseason, but most expect Grant to be one of the best remaining players on the board when Pittsburgh is on the clock this April.
We can't rule out wide receiver as an option for the Steelers, by any means, but Kenneth Grant is exactly the type of player this team needs and the value in the first round could match up perfectly with the positional need. Expect him to be one of the top prospects on Pittsburgh's radar throughout the pre-draft process.