The Steelers’ most important roster move this week didn’t come from a new addition. It came from a trade that finally moved on from Broderick Jones.
Pittsburgh finalized its initial 53-man roster with a handful of notable cuts and changes, including veteran departures such as Elandon Roberts and Malik Harrison, along with the decision to send second-year running back Kaleb Johnson to the Green Bay Packers. More changes could still come before the regular season opener against the Atlanta Falcons, but for now the clearest value the Steelers created came by getting something back for a player who never solved the problem in front of him.
Jones is now with the Cowboys, and the Steelers picked up a third- and sixth-round pick from Dallas in exchange for Jones and a fourth-round draft choice. That left Pittsburgh with an immediate hole at tackle, one that puts more pressure on rookie Max Iheanachor and journeyman Dylan Cook to handle the right tackle job unless the team brings in another player before Week 1.
Even with that issue hanging over the depth chart, the Steelers clearly saw this as addition by subtraction. The organization decided draft capital mattered more than keeping Jones on the roster, and that tells the story of how this ended.
The Broderick Jones experiment in Pittsburgh is likely to be remembered as a failure, even if the team did not exactly make life easy on him by moving him back and forth between left tackle and right tackle. Still, the bottom line never changed: whether he lined up on the left side or the right side, Jones never figured it out.
That is why the Steelers had to move on. They used a first-round pick on him four years ago and did not get the return they were hoping for, so Omar Khan made the call to cut bait and recover value where he could. The result was a deal that gave Pittsburgh assets for a player who had become a problem, and that makes it the smartest move the team made while trimming the roster for the regular season.
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Steelers Just Turned Up The Pressure On Joey Porter Jr
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Joey Porter Jr. is now eligible to get back on the field while the team still works through the larger business side of things. The move does not mean an extension is done, but it does give Pittsburgh the option to bring him back into the lineup and keep negotiating before the season gets rolling, a useful bit of leverage for a team trying to manage both health and roster planning. [Read more 🡒]
Steelers Roster Choice Already Looks Worse For One Big Reason
The Steelers decision to carry four quarterbacks on the initial 53-man roster says plenty about where the organizations priorities sat when cutdown day arrived. Keeping Will Howard, Drew Allar and Mason Rudolph in the mix gave Pittsburgh an unusual amount of depth at the games most important position, even if it came with a cost on the other side of the ball and left room for questions about how the roster was being balanced.
Inside linebacker Elandon Roberts was the notable casualty, and it is the kind of move that can look sharper in hindsight once the rest of the leagues roster churn settles. With young passers such as Will Levis and Joe Milton becoming available after cuts, the Steelers had alternatives they could have targeted for the practice squad, which only adds to the sense that preserving quarterback depth came at the expense of a proven defensive presence. [Read more 🡒]