The Pittsburgh Football Podcast

By Chris Gates | The Pittsburgh Football Podcast

Give the Pittsburgh Steelers some credit.

They managed to get something for Broderick Jones and Kaleb Johnson.

Jones was traded to the Dallas Cowboys as part of a deal that brings Pittsburgh a 2027 third-round pick and sixth-round pick while sending a 2027 fourth-round pick back to Dallas.

Johnson was traded to the Green Bay Packers for a 2028 sixth-round pick.

Neither player appeared likely to have a significant role with the Steelers this season, so rather than simply cutting them and getting nothing in return, Pittsburgh found teams willing to give up draft capital.

That’s good.

But I think focusing on what the Steelers got in return misses the much bigger — and much more concerning — story.

Look at what the Steelers originally invested in these players.

Broderick Jones was the No. 14 overall pick in the 2023 NFL Draft.

Kaleb Johnson was the No. 83 overall pick in 2025.

Now neither is on the roster.

That’s the problem.

These Aren’t Just Two Guys Who Didn’t Make the Team

The NFL Draft is always going to be unpredictable.

Every team misses.

There will be late-round picks who become stars and first-round picks who never develop into anything close to what their teams envisioned.

But when you’re spending top-100 selections, the expectation should be that you’re finding players who become meaningful pieces of your roster.

Ideally, those players develop into cornerstones.

You draft them, develop them, get several productive seasons out of their rookie contracts and, if they’re good enough, eventually sign them to second contracts.

Instead, Pittsburgh has now turned two recent top-100 selections into significantly less valuable draft capital.

That’s not something to celebrate.

It’s an attempt to salvage value from investments that didn’t work.

The Broderick Jones Situation Is Especially Frustrating

The Steelers didn’t just draft Jones in the first round.

They traded up to get him.

Pittsburgh selected Jones 14th overall in 2023 with the expectation that he would become a long-term answer at offensive tackle.

Three years later, he’s a Dallas Cowboy.

And I don’t think you can discuss what happened with Jones without looking at how the Steelers handled his development.

Jones came into the NFL as a young, athletic tackle who still needed development.

Instead of putting him at one position and allowing him to grow into it, the Steelers bounced him around.

• Left tackle.
• Right tackle.
• Back to the other side.

Different circumstances. Different expectations.

Jones obviously bears responsibility for his own performance, too, and his injury further complicated the situation. But I don’t think Pittsburgh consistently put him in the best possible environment to develop into the player they thought they were drafting.

And ultimately, the Steelers had to go back to the first round of the NFL Draft and select another offensive tackle.

Think about the resources involved there.

• You use premium draft capital on Jones.
• You invest several years into developing him.
• It doesn’t work.

Then you have to spend another first-round pick at the same position.

And eventually, you trade Jones for a package headlined by a third-round pick while also sending Dallas a fourth.

You can like the trade given the circumstances while simultaneously acknowledging that everything leading up to the trade represents a massive organizational failure.

Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive.

Kaleb Johnson’s Value Collapsed Even Faster

Then there’s Kaleb Johnson.

Johnson was the 83rd overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft.

One year later, the Steelers traded him for a sixth-round pick in the 2028 draft.

Again, maybe that’s good work by Omar Khan given the circumstances.

If Johnson wasn’t going to play and Pittsburgh was eventually going to cut him, getting anything is better than getting nothing.

But zoom out.

We’re talking about the No. 83 pick in the draft.

A year ago, the Steelers decided Johnson was worth one of their most valuable draft selections.

Now they’ve decided they’d rather have a sixth-round lottery ticket three drafts from now.

That’s an enormous destruction of value in an incredibly short period of time.

And that’s what bothers me more than the actual trade.

Look at Pittsburgh’s Recent First-Round History

Jones becomes even more concerning when you put his departure alongside Pittsburgh’s recent first-round draft history.

The Steelers no longer have any of their first-round selections from 2018 through 2023 on the roster.

• Terrell Edmunds.
• Devin Bush.
• Najee Harris.
• Kenny Pickett.
• Broderick Jones.

There are different circumstances surrounding every player on that list. I’m not arguing that every one of those selections was an outright bust, nor does every departure fall at the feet of the current Steelers regime.

Omar Khan wasn’t the general manager for most of those selections.

But from an organizational standpoint, look at the result.

Where are the foundational players?

Where are the first-round picks who developed in Pittsburgh, entered their primes and became Steelers for the long haul?

They’re largely not here.

That’s an enormous problem.

The Kenny Pickett Situation Is Another Example

Kenny Pickett is an interesting part of this conversation, too.

The Steelers drafted him in the first round in 2022 because they thought he could become their franchise quarterback.

That obviously didn’t happen.

But Pickett has continued to show elsewhere that he can at least function as a highly serviceable NFL backup quarterback.

He won games for Philadelphia during its Super Bowl season. He’s continued to show he can perform in preseason football.

Meanwhile, Pittsburgh is carrying four quarterbacks on its current roster while scrambling to figure out which young QB is worth investing time in Mike McCarthy’s development program to be a future starter.

The organization is quite literally wasting depth at other positions to try and solve the failures surrounding the most important position on the football field.

There’s something frustrating about looking at all the resources Pittsburgh has poured into trying to figure out its quarterback room while remembering that it spent a first-round pick on Pickett just four years ago.

Again, this isn’t about arguing Pickett should be the Steelers’ “franchise quarterback.”

It’s about the process.

You spent premium draft capital on him, absolutely torpedoed his development by giving him Matt Canada as an offensive coordinator, and then moved on almost immediately just to continue pouring resources into the position afterward.

That pattern should concern you.

Drafting Is Only Part of the Equation

This is why I don’t think the conversation can simply be, “The Steelers need to draft better.”

Of course they do.

But identifying talent is only one piece of roster construction.

You have to:

• Draft the right players.
• Develop those players correctly.
• Put them in positions to succeed.
• And retain the good ones once they develop.

Pittsburgh has struggled somewhere along that chain far too frequently.

Jones is a perfect example.

Maybe the evaluation was wrong.

Maybe the development was wrong.

Maybe it was some combination of both.

Regardless, the outcome is the same: a player Pittsburgh thought was worth trading up for at No. 14 overall is gone three years later.

Johnson is an even faster version of the same problem.

No. 83 overall to a future sixth-round pick in approximately one year.

That’s terrible return on investment.

And That’s Why Joey Porter Jr. Matters, Too

Ironically, the ongoing Joey Porter Jr. contract situation provides the other side of this entire discussion.

Because Porter represents what is supposed to happen.

The Steelers drafted him with the 32nd overall pick.

They developed him.

He became their No. 1 cornerback and one of the better players at his position in the NFL.

Great!

That’s the goal.

But now they have to complete the process by retaining him.

If you draft players like Jones and Johnson and they don’t develop, that’s a problem.

If you finally draft someone like Porter, successfully develop him into a high-level NFL player and then can’t find a way to keep him?

That’s a different problem with the same eventual result.

The player is no longer a Pittsburgh Steeler.

At some point, the organization has to consistently turn premium draft picks into long-term foundational pieces.

Now It’s On Omar Khan and Mike McCarthy

There’s an important distinction to make when evaluating all of this.

Most of Pittsburgh’s ugly recent first-round history predates the current combination of Omar Khan and Mike McCarthy.

Khan shouldn’t be personally blamed for every mistake the Steelers made before he became general manager.

And McCarthy obviously had nothing to do with the development of those players.

They now have an opportunity to change the trajectory.

All 10 members of Pittsburgh’s 2026 draft class made the initial 53-man roster.

That’s encouraging.

But simply making the roster isn’t the goal.

• What happens next?
• Can these players develop?
• Can Max Iheanachor become the long-term answer at tackle that Pittsburgh hoped Jones would be?
• Can the rest of this class turn into legitimate starters and contributors?
• Can the best players eventually earn second contracts and remain in Pittsburgh?

Those are the results that matter.

Because I’m past the point of automatically giving the Steelers the benefit of the doubt with their draft picks.

Prove it.

Develop these guys.

Turn them into good NFL players.

And five years from now, let’s look at the Steelers’ roster and see a collection of homegrown players entering their primes instead of another graphic filled with former first-round picks who are playing somewhere else.

The Jones and Johnson trades may have been smart moves in isolation.

But they shouldn’t make anyone feel better about how Pittsburgh got here.

The Steelers didn’t create value with these trades.

They salvaged what little value remained from two premium draft investments that had already gone wrong.

And until that stops happening, Pittsburgh’s problems in the NFL Draft are going to continue showing up on the field — and on the transaction wire.