Steelers News: Should the Steelers still target a wide receiver this offseason?

The Pittsburgh Steelers 2019 season is officially over. After finishing the year 8-8, the Steelers, and their vast fan base, has another long offseason awaiting them. Just because the games are done doesn’t mean we stop providing you with features, commentary and opinions to tide you over throughout the offseason!

Today in the black-and-gold links article we take at whether the Pittsburgh Steelers should target a wide receiver this offseason.

Let’s get to the news:

• Diontae Johnson, James Washington and JuJu Smith-Schuster will make up a very solid Top 3 wide receiving corps, but should the Steelers look to add to that group this offseason?

Despite unproductive 2019, does Steelers WR corps have promise?

By: Chris Adamski, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

In illustrating how unproductive the Pittsburgh Steelers wide receivers corps was by modern NFL standards, consider that their top three combined for statistics that were roughly equivalent to Michael Thomas alone.

• The New Orleans Saints’ Thomas during his record-setting 2019: 148 catches, 1,725 receiving yards, nine touchdowns.

• The Steelers’ starting threesome of JuJu Smith-Schuster, Diontae Johnson and James Washington: 145 catches, 1,967 yards, 11 touchdowns.

Thomas averaged 107.9 yards and 9.1 catches per game; meanwhile, not once did a Steelers wide receiver catch as many as nine passes in a game, and just once did any match or surpass 107 yards in a game (Washington, 111 vs. Cleveland, Dec. 1).

For good measure, the 11 touchdowns that the Steelers top trio managed was matched by the NFL leader in that category, the Detroit Lions’ Kenny Golladay.

In other words, while there were plenty of justifications and extenuating circumstances relating to it, that doesn’t hide that 2019 was far from a memorable season for the Steelers’ wide receivers.

To read the full article, click HERE (Free)

• The Rooney Rule continues to be a talking point heading into the offseason.

The Rooney Rule (still) isn’t working

By: Mike Florio, ProFootballTalk

To say that the Rooney Rule isn’t working is to presume that it ever did. It never truly did, at least not in the way it was intended.

Ideally, the rule requiring at least one minority candidate to be interviewed for every head-coaching vacancy will prompt owners to engage in a deliberate, patient, inclusive search, one that doesn’t have the destination selected before the journey begins. That’s not how it worked in the decades before the rule was created, and that’s definitely not how it has worked in the 18 years since the rule was put in place.

The Rooney Rule was never about forcing an owner to hire a minority candidate. It was about requiring owners to give fair consideration to a diverse set of qualified candidates before picking the next coach. But even though the league can mandate at least one interview of a minority candidate, the league can never force owners to not make decisions about the coaches they want to hire.

And so the practical value of the rule comes only from the fact that requiring interviews of at least one minority candidate per vacancy places into the media pipeline names that otherwise wouldn’t be mentioned, and gives minority candidates opportunities to get experience with the interview process. There’s value in that, although less value when (for example) the Cowboys choose to interview not an up-and-coming assistant but Marvin Lewis, who needs no boost in name recognition or job-interview experience.

To read the full article, click HERE (Free)

• The biggest free agent decisions facing the Steelers this offseason...

Biggest looming 2020 free-agent decisions for all 32 NFL teams

By: NFL Nation, ESPN

Pittsburgh Steelers biggest free agent decision:

Outside linebacker Bud Dupree

Mike Tomlin was unequivocal in his end-of-year news conference: Dupree is a priority. And he should be. With 11.5 sacks, Dupree had a breakout season in the last year of his contract and formed a formidable edge-rushing duo with T.J. Watt. Dupree could fetch significant money on the open market, and the Steelers don’t have much cap space to match those numbers. Using the franchise tag on him gives the Steelers the best option to retain him in a year where they carry Ben Roethlisberger’s $33.5 million cap hit. Keeping Dupree will mean letting go of some expensive veterans to clear space, but he proved this season that he’s worth it. -- Brooke Pryor

To read the full article, click HERE (Free)

• Social Media Madness