I don’t get it, the article that I found was from a Tampa Bay paper that says Tampa fell out of the running b/c they already have too many running backs. I can’t imagine the Steelers would sign Kevin Jones unless they already had a trade in principal to move out FWP or M&M, that’s the only thing that makes sense to me. Surely this is just his agent trying to keep more than one team in the picture to drive up value.

Why would we draft a RB in round 1, then, before signing him, trade Parker below value (us trading him after his injury would raise a few red flags)? Surely Moore wouldn’t bring much trade value, and it sounds like he’s had a pretty good offseason so far. He’s also probably our best P/K returner, and we need a returner. We wouldn’t trade him when we’re not sure if Mendy will be able to be a third down back right off the bat yet. And Russell is worthless in a trade, however much potential he may have.

Jones is still young and could still return to his rookie form, but there’s just no room for him on our roster. At this point, I’d say Gary Russell has more potential. The only other thing I can imagine is that they want another guy who could return kicks, but I can’t find anything that suggests he’s done that in the past. This interest in Jones still doesn’t make sense.

This is just wild talk – but what if we found someone who wanted the rights to Mendenhall. From all reports he did slide quite a bit – I haven’t done much research but I wonder if a few teams have multiple first round picks next year. We might think, hey – we could grab another first next year – then pick up a few O linemen if the line doesn’t perform this year.

They aren’t as confident in FWP’s health as they are letting on

This is pure speculation, but perhaps Mendenhall’s agent is playing hardball, particularly after Davenport was shown the exit. So signing Jones would put pressure on him to accept a deal. I wouldn’t put it past the Steelers to sign Jones and stick Russell on the practice squad. We could then trade our least performing back to the Bears or another team later.

Bears signed him to a one year deal for the league minimum. I’d have to think he could have gone to a much better team for the league minimum if he had wanted to.

Maybe the market just isn’t that good out there for injury prone rb’s. Decent RBs seem to be available every round of the draft, free agency, the street. Maybe RBs is the Starbucks position – oversaturated.

I guess it’s all moot now, but my thought, from the Steelers perspective, was that they could have been looking to trade Mendenhall for a solid offensive lineman. That is the only reason that I could see them being interested in Kevin Jones.

I would be very happy in the Bears slot. Beating out Forte vs, some type of table scraps of Parker, Mewelde, Mendy, et al is an easy choice.