Steelers News: Cam Heyward will get a new deal, and he deserves every penny

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 how DE Cameron Heyward will be getting a new contract, and he deserves every penny of that deal.

Let’s get to the news:

• The Pittsburgh Steelers don’t negotiate new contracts with players until their final year, unless they are quarterbacks, and Cam Heyward is due for a new deal. He deserves every penny of whatever deal he gets.

Cameron Heyward only sure extension candidate among Steelers entering final contract year

By: Chris Adamski, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

In the aftermath of the 2019 season, Pittsburgh Steelers players were reluctant to talk about 2020.

Let alone 2021.

But for a handful of starters, 2021 is when their current contract expires. And with the way the Steelers do business, that makes the coming months a potentially critical period of their careers.

The Steelers’ policy for players they want for the long term is to give them contract extensions a year before their current deals expire. This spring, that means starters such as Cameron Heyward, JuJu Smith-Schuster, Mike Hilton, Alejendro Villanueva, Matt Feiler, James Conner and Mark Barron.

The end of 2019 still fresh, players who spoke earlier this month had little taste for looking ahead.

“Not at all,” receiver Smith-Schuster said when asked if he was considering his contract situation. “Just doing what I’m told, just trying to get healthy for the next season and just trying to help the guys.”

To read the full article, click HERE (Free)

• With Donnie Shell now in the Hall of Fame, the 1974 draft class is by far the best ever.

Donnie Shell’s Hall of Fame selection puts stamp on Steelers’ 1974 rookie class

By: Joe Rutter, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

The selection of Donnie Shell to the Pro Football Hall of Fame last week gave the Pittsburgh Steelers a neat and tidy 10 players from the four-time Super Bowl championship teams in the 1970s a spot in Canton, Ohio.

Shell became the fifth member of the Steel Curtain defense to make it, matching the five players picked from the Super Steelers offense.

Half of those selections were produced by the 1974 rookie class, a feat — much like Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak or Wayne Gretzky’s 2,857 points — that will never be equaled.

But while wide receiver Lynn Swann joined the Steelers in the first round, linebacker Jack Lambert in the second, receiver John Stallworth in the third and center Mike Webster in the fifth, the strong safety from Division I-AA South Carolina State wasn’t among the 442 players selected over the draft’s 17 rounds. A linebacker at the start of his college career, Shell moved to the secondary in his senior season, and his measurables — 5-foot-11,190 pounds — weren’t extraordinary.

To read the full article, click HERE (Free)

• Silly Mike Mayock...

Mike Mayock thought Raiders would “get the best out of Antonio Brown”

By: Charean Williams, ProFootballTalk

The Raiders traded for Antonio Brown to great fanfare March 10. They released him Sept. 7 without him ever playing a down for them.

But it wasn’t a quiet six months to be sure.

Raiders General Manager Mike Mayock takes the blame for the AB saga, which turned into a soap opera.

“I put that on me,” Mayock told Vic Tafur of TheAthletic.com on Friday. “My anticipation was that he was coming off a situation in Pittsburgh where he wants to prove everybody wrong, and he wants to ride into the Hall of Fame. That he was going to come in with Jon Gruden and Derek Carr and our offense and lead the way. . . .I really thought we were going to get the best out of Antonio Brown, and we didn’t.

“We weren’t able to get anything out of him. So, at the end of the day, in hindsight, we lost a third-round pick and a fifth-round pick, and I can’t tell you how much pain that causes me.”

To read the full article, click HERE (Free)

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