By John Clayton
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/09/05/steelers-are-less-talented-than-year-ago-their-gm-isnt-worried/
September 5, 2019
Devin Bush
Kevin Colbert’s first challenge was to not be intimidated by the numbers.
Last season, Le’Veon Bell sat out every game, depriving the Pittsburgh Steelers’ offense of a running back who could rush for 1,300 yards and catch between 75 and 85 passes. The following offseason began with Antonio Brown demanding a trade, which would send away a wide receiver who caught more than 100 passes in each of the past six years.
Both players wanted deals that would make them the highest-paid at their respective positions. The Steelers’ general manager had to study the numbers both on the field and in the salary cap to make two critical decisions for the franchise.
“I think last year at the running back position we had roughly 150 yards less production than the year before,” Colbert said. “So the running back position was just as productive. When you take 100 catches out of your offense, the quarterback is not going have 100 less completions. Moving forward, who’s going to take those make up the difference?
“JuJu Smith-Schuster is not going to catch 200 passes. The question is whether Vance McDonald is going to catch an extra 20. Is James Washington going to catch extra 40? And how many for Donte Moncrief? We will go through the year and we will find out.”
Colbert knows the Steelers’ offense isn’t as talented as it was two seasons ago, after losing one of the game’s best receivers and one of its best running backs. But Pittsburgh still feels as though it can be an AFC contender this season, and recent NFL history is full of examples of teams that have improved their records even after losing talented contributors. Just last year, a Seattle Seahawks team that had recently parted with the likes of Richard Sherman ended up winning more games.
“I think we can be just as productive and just as dynamic because we have the quarterback in that spot,” Colbert said.
Ben Roethlisberger is at the center of everything for the Steelers. He signed a two-year, $68 million extension ensuring he’d be running the offense for the next three seasons, and a year after facilitating an offense that saw Smith-Schuster and Conner emerge as Pro Bowlers, he is once again critical to the team’s Super Bowl hopes.
But the veteran quarterback also received criticism from Brown, who claimed Roethlisberger got special treatment — including from Colbert — that was bad for the other players on the roster. If Roethlisberger is key to the team’s contender status, the last 10 months may also have served as a reminder for him, Colbert and the entire Steelers organization that they’ll need more than just Big Ben to make a postseason run.
That includes a rookie linebacker for whom Colbert made a bold trade to move up in the draft, some key additions on defense and a lesser-known cast of skill-position players that Colbert feels will be elevated by playing with Roethlisberger.
Colbert is a big hockey fan and a season-ticket holder of the Pittsburgh Penguins. He’s seen how guys like Mario Lemieux and Sidney Crosby can raise the level of play of their teammates.
“When you put players on a line with Sidney Crosby, they are all of a sudden more productive than when they have been somewhere else,” Colbert said. “You can look at it in any sport. It’s usually not the player himself, but how he performs within his unit on the team.”
That has helped, Colbert says, with the team’s impressive track record for drafting wide receivers. The Steelers might be the best team in the league at identifying talent at the position, and their past finds include Hines Ward, Mike Wallace, Emmanuel Sanders, Plaxico Burress, Brown and Smith-Schuster.
“We don’t do anything different in evaluating wide receivers,” Colbert said. “We’ve missed on a couple at that position, as many as we’ve missed on other positions. We’ve had some guys really turned into great players. I never sell short the fact when you come in with Hall of Fame-type quarterback, I think that helps.”
That history may have contributed to Pittsburgh’s comfort level will letting Bell leave in free agency and trading Brown to the Oakland Raiders for third- and fifth-round picks (although relationships with both players appeared beyond repair by that point, anyway), as did the upgrades to the roster they could make with the additional draft picks and cap room. They signed cornerback Steven Nelson to a three-year, $25.5 million contract, and he has already proven to be an upgrade in pass coverage. They also added linebacker Mark Barron and wide receiver Donte Moncrief on two-year pacts.
“We were able to add some folks from the outside that you may not have been able to add,” Colbert said.
In the draft, Colbert added a complementary running back (Benny Snell Jr.) and a wide receiver (Diontae Johnson). But the boldest move was his trade up to get inside linebacker Devin Bush at 10th overall, sending a 2019 second-rounder and 2020 third-rounder to the Denver Broncos.
“When you go into a draft, you identify six or seven player who, if you got to within their reach, you would try to trade up to get them,” Colbert said. “This year, Devin was identified as one of those players.”
Colbert said the team justified the cost to get Bush because of how important the role is that he will be asked to fill: a sideline-to-sideline linebacker the team has been missing since the injury to Ryan Shazier.
“You know, the game has changed,” Colbert said. “It’s not a vertical game as much as it is now a horizontal game. You have to be able to defend horizontally. It’s different. When we drafted Ryan Shazier, we were probably ahead of the game with his ability to make plays sideline to sideline. When you lose a guy like him, hopefully you can replace him with a Devin Bush or a Mark Barron.
“Now we are much better equipped to defend modern NFL football than we were in recent years, because now we’ve got two guys who can really cover.”
It remains to be seen if the combination of Bush’s arrival, the ascension of some younger players on offense and a revitalized Roethlisberger will be enough to lift the Steelers past the upstart Cleveland Browns and rebuilt Baltimore Ravens in the AFC North. But there should be opportunity in an AFC that appears thinner than in past years, and the Steelers seem excited by the prospect of sneaking up on those who assume the losses of Bell and Brown will derail their playoff hopes.
“I think every team has an identity,” Colbert said. “On average you add 14 to 16 new players per year. When you take away dynamic producers, someone else has to produce. It doesn’t mean you can’t be a better team. We were 9-6-1 and a non-playoff team [last season], so we’re hopeful the group we have for 2019 is better than that. That’s not acceptable for us.”
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