Apr 9, 2021 5 min read

This is the time of year, everyone with a pulse puts out a mock NFL draft. Some do more than one. I’ve got to admit, I do a bunch of them myself.

But mock drafts are just that – mocks. They’re not necessarily realistic. Just because you were able to go onto the mockdraftmania.com website and make 20 trades that allowed you to draft Trevor Lawrence, Najee Harris, Patrick Surtain II and Micah Parsons – all in the fourth round – does not mean that’s what the Steelers or your favorite team will be able to do.

I went onto the mock drafter for popular the Pro Football Focus website, which actually grades users on their performance.

Drafting for the Steelers, I took a quarterback in every round of the draft. Eight picks. Eight quarterbacks.

See, Pro Football Focus automatically gives you an A-plus grade if you draft a quarterback – any quarterback – in any round. So, it didn’t matter that I selected a quarterback with a mid-round grade in the first round, or that I took quarterback after quarterback.

It was all an A-plus simply because I had selected a quarterback.

Quarterback is, in fact, the most important position in the game. But not to that extreme.

Have fun with mock drafts. Use them for the tool that they are. But don’t fall in love with the results or the rankings.

Just because you were able to get a certain player in the third round doesn’t mean that’s where the Steelers will be able to get him. That mock draft is based off someone’s rankings. And those rankings do not necessarily match how NFL teams view those players.

n A number of national media types are now beating the drum for the Steelers to take a quarterback in this draft.

That’s dumb.

The Steelers are picking 24th in the first round of the draft later this month. That won’t be early enough to get one of the top quarterbacks in this draft unless one of them inexplicably falls.

The expectation is that Lawrence, Justin Fields, Zach Wilson, Mac Jones and Trey Lance won’t make it past the top 15 picks.

And the Steelers should definitely not be in the market to trade up and get one of those players.

After those players are gone, it would be a waste of a pick to take a quarterback in this draft.

Ben Roethlisberger is back for 2021, and if he has a good season, there’s no reason to think he wouldn’t come back for 2022. That’s a possibility.

The Steelers also have Mason Rudolph and former Washington first-round draft pick Dwayne Haskins on their roster behind Roethlisberger.

None of those quarterbacks are under contract for 2022, but if the Steelers want any or all of them, they have the salary cap space to make that happen.

If they want none of those players, they can go that route, too.

But all a rookie quarterback would do on this roster is stand on the sideline and watch a lot of practice.

The Steelers got Haskins, the 15th pick in the 2019 draft, for nothing after he was released by Washington. They need to see what they have there by giving him practice and preseason snaps.

They also need to get Roethlisberger and Rudolph enough snaps to be ready for the 2021 season. That wouldn’t leave many snaps for a rookie project.

It also would waste a year of a quarterback on his cheap rookie contract.

If the Steelers want to take a flier on a developmental quarterback, they can do that next year. Haskins serves that purpose this year.

n I also don’t understand why I’m seeing so many mock drafts giving the Steelers an edge rusher – any edge rusher – in the first round simply because they lost Bud Dupree.

That’s why Alex Highsmith was drafted in the third round a year ago.

The Steelers could use depth at the position. But they don’t need to worry about that on the draft’s first two days. That can be something they take care of in the later rounds.

Also, many of the edge rushers being mocked to the Steelers are defensive ends, not outside linebackers. The definition of an edge rusher has changed in recent years, but the Steelers still ask their outside linebackers to drop into pass coverage.

Slotting a true 4-3 defensive end to the Steelers just because he is an edge rusher doesn’t make any sense.

n If I’m the Pirates and I have the choice between Kumar Rocker and Jack Leiter later this summer in the draft, I think I’d take Leiter.

His stuff is flat-out electric.

The nice thing is that you get to see them both on the same college team. Leiter and Rocker are Vanderbilt’s top two pitchers.

In his first seven starts, Leiter, the son of former Major League pitcher Al Leiter, is 7-0 with a 0.43 ERA and 71 strikeouts in 42 innings. Rocker is 7-0 with a 0.84 ERA and 61 strikeouts in 43 innings.

Not surprisingly, Vanderbilt is 23-3.