Mar 21, 2020 6 min read

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

The Steelers enter free agency tight against the salary cap and suffer some losses that have fans gnashing their teeth. The sky is always falling, they say, at least in the first few days of free agency.

Then, over the next few days or weeks, they fill in the spots to the point where if they had to line up and play a game right before the draft, they could do so with NFL-caliber players at every position.

Such it was this year. Except this time around, they filled the spots in just over 24 hours, taking advantage of the second wave of free agency after all the silly money had been spent by other teams.

And because of the moves, they’ll enter the draft without any obvious needs – as usual.

Thursday night, they signed interior offensive lineman Stefen Wisniewski, replacing B.J. Finney. Friday morning, they re-signed safety Jordan Dangerfield, keeping the status quo at that position. Then, they added tight end Eric Ebron in free agency and traded for defensive lineman Chris Wormley in place of Nick Vannett and Javon Hargrave. All that came after the team agreed to terms Wednesday with fullback Derek Watt to replace both Tyler Matakevich as a special teams ace and Roosevelt Nix, who missed most of the 2019 season with a knee injury.

We can argue over whether the Steelers are a better team with these moves over the one that ended the 2019 season, but there are some caveats, not the least of which is Ben Roethlisberger’s health.

The Steelers loved Finney. He was a valuable member of the team the past four years. And they made a pitch to keep him. But they weren’t going to go to $4 million per year with him, not when they couldn’t guarantee him a starting spot.

In Wisniewski, a South Fayette native who attended Central Catholic, they get a player who is not only more experienced than Finney – though slightly older – but one who has started two of the past three Super Bowls. Nothing against Finney, but he couldn’t offer that.

Ebron offers an upgrade over what the Steelers did last season at tight end, when they opened the season with Xavier Grimble backing up Vance McDonald before making a trade for Vannett. Without Roethlisberger, opponents loaded the middle of the field with defenders and the tight ends were nearly nonexistent in the passing game.

That won’t be the case with the addition of Ebron. He has issues with drops, but he’s a player who must be accounted for by defenses. He certainly can challenge the seam and could help open things up for JuJu Smith-Schuster. Or Dionate Johnson. Or James Washington. Or even McDonald.

There’s some risk. Like McDonald, Ebron comes to the Steelers with a reputation for dropping some easy passes, though that hasn’t exactly been an issue for McDonald since coming to Pittsburgh.

The other issue for Ebron, much like McDonald, is health. But that seems to be the case for all tight ends. Because of the rigors of the position, they get beaten up more than players at other spots. Though Ebron played all 16 games in 2017 and 2018, he’s missed games in each of his other four NFL seasons, including five in 2019 with an ankle injury that required surgery.

At worst, the Steelers will have one starting-caliber tight end available every game in 2020. At best, they’ll have two tight ends capable of challenging defenses.

Finally, adding Wormley gives the Steelers much better depth on the defensive line, at least at end. While Hargrave played 62.7% of the defensive snaps last season – a career high – he played only 43.6% in 2018 – a career low. Wormley played nearly 50% of the snaps for the Ravens last season, but became expendable with the additions of Calais Campbell and Michael Brockers.

The idea for the Steelers is to not play as much 3-4 defense. The idea is to only be in that alignment about 25% of the time. Tyson Alualu can certainly handle those extra snaps. Wormley can now serve as a backup to Cam Heyward and Stephon Tuitt. And if Isaiah Buggs, a 2019 sixth-round pick, continues to improve, he could be in that mix.

The Steelers only have six picks in this year’s draft. And the first one doesn’t come until 49th overall. They weren’t going to be able to fill all of those holes. Given the talent available in this draft at tight end and interior offensive lineman, there wasn’t a player that was going to be available to them who is better than Ebron or Wisniewski – at least not in 2020.

And for a team that fancies itself a Super Bowl contender, the 2020 product is all that mattered.

• In case you missed them this week, AT&T SportsNet aired replays of the 2019 Pony World Series.

Those included a Washington win over London, the European Zone champion, and a 5-4 loss to eventual runner-up Bay County, Mich. The local team went 2-2 in the tournament last year, it’s best showing in well over a decade.

As has been the case the past few years, the Washington team included players not only from Washington Youth Baseball, but Canon-McMillan Youth Baseball, as well. This year, the Washington County team will have an even bigger pool of players from which to choose.

Chartiers-Houston’s Pony teams will join Washington and Canon-McMillan as part of the Founder’s League, from which the Pony World Series team is chosen.

That will push the total number of Pony League players from which the local entrant into the World Series is chosen to around 120 players and 10 teams.

It’s not the thousands of players from which some of the other World Series teams choose their teams, but it’s a continuation of moving in the direction of having a true Washington County Pony team.

But for people thinking fingers can be snapped and that can happen overnight, realize that other organizations within the county have been offered the chance to participate in the past and have turned it down.

And no matter what, PONY Inc. rules must be followed to make such additions happen.