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How James Harrison’s Release Affects the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Strategy in the 2013 NFL Draft

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2013 NFL Draft, 2013 Offseason, AFC North, Pittsburgh Steelers, SteelerAddicts

March 11, 2013

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Move over, running back and wide receiver. Make room for outside linebacker on the list of Pittsburgh Steelers’ urgent draft needs.

With the release of James Harrison, and the questionable depth behind him, the Steelers need to use a high draft pick on an outside linebacker who can get to the quarterback. If they don’t and LaMarr Woodley doesn’t shape up, opposing quarterbacks will have time to complete a sudoku puzzle before releasing the ball.

Here’s the problem. The Steelers also will have gaping holes at running back and wide receiver because they expect to lose Rashard Mendenhall and Mike Wallace as free agents.

In recent years, the Steelers have been able to get away with not drafting for their specific needs.

They needed an offensive lineman in 2008 after not re-signing Alan Faneca. Instead, they were smitten with Mendenhall when he unexpectedly dropped to No. 23. Despite not addressing the offensive line until the fourth round, they won the Super Bowl the following year.

The Steelers drafted Ziggy Hood in the first round of the 2009 draft and Cameron Heyward in the first round in 2011 because they were starting to age on the defensive line. They didn’t need either of them to contribute right away.

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2012 Grades, Position by Position, Defense

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2012 Regular Season, Defense, Defensive Line, Linebackers, Pittsburgh Steelers, Report Cards, Secondary

March 10, 2013

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When it’s all said and done, exactly how well did the defense play this last season? How well did DC Dick Le Beau and his staff handle the ups and downs, the pressure of stopping NFL offenses.

The strict statistician in me wants to point to the numbers and say, “They did just fine.”

But, as with all things in football, the truth is more complex than simple numbers. Read the rest of this entry »

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Cutting James Harrison Was the Wrong Move for the Pittsburgh Steelers

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2013 Offseason, AFC North, Defense, Linebackers, NFL News, Pittsburgh Steelers, Roster Cuts, SteelerAddicts, Steelers News

March 9, 2013

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The Pittsburgh Steelers got worse on Saturday, and they weren’t that good to begin with.

The Steelers released James Harrison, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and that was a mistake.

NFL games are not won or lost in March, but right now it’s hard to feel good about the Steelers’ chances of improving on their 8-8 record next season.

The Steelers had been cleaning up their salary cap mess by restructuring contracts. But unlike last year, when they released Hines Ward and James Farrior, the process had been relatively pain-free.

At some point the Steelers were going to have to let go of a player they would rather have kept.

Harrison was the wrong player to cut, however.

A five-time Pro Bowler and 2008 NFL Defensive Player of the Year, Harrison was fourth in franchise history with 64 career sacks, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He gave the Steelers defense so much of its identity. The Steelers defense is less intimidating without Harrison filling the No. 92 jersey.

When asked last summer how well he thought his surgically repaired neck would hold up in a game, Peyton Manning said he wasn’t worried but that he wasn’t exactly inviting Harrison to come and get him in the 2012 season opener.

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Should The Steelers Consider Manti Te’o After The First Round?

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2013 NFL Draft, AFC North, Defense, Linebackers, Pittsburgh Steelers, SteelerAddicts

March 9, 2013

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Manti Te’o was once considered a sure fire top ten pick in the 2013 NFL Draft and now people question whether or not he would even be worth selecting in the first round. Te’o’s “catfish” situation has been well documented, he struggled in the National Championship game and to top everything off, he failed to impress at all at the Scouting Combine. His performance was so underwhelming that it prompted ESPN’s Mark May, per this article, to tweet “Any team that wastes a 1st round pick on Manti Te’o should fire their GM on draft day”.
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Grading the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Round-by-Round Value in the 2011 NFL Draft

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2013 Offseason, AFC North, Defense, Defensive Line, Depth Chart, Linebackers, Offense, Offensive Line, Pittsburgh Steelers, Report Cards, Secondary, Special Teams, SteelerAddicts

March 4, 2013

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The Pittsburgh Steelers will need some help from their 2011 NFL Draft class if they want to avoid a second straight season that ends in December.

It will be a few years before the value grade for this draft is set in stone. Six of the seven players chosen are still with the Steelers.

If some of these players tap their upside, this draft could help the Steelers regain their status as perennial Super Bowl contenders.

If these players have reached their plateau, however, this could be the Steelers’ worst draft since 1996, not just in terms of value but overall. That hunk of junk was a factor in the Steelers’ three-year playoff drought from 1998 to 2000.

In terms of round-by-round value, this is the ideal draft to apply our formula (click here). It’s the only one in which the Steelers have had one pick in each of the seven rounds.

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2012 Grades, Position by Position, Defensive Secondary

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SteelerAddicts

March 3, 2013

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In the recent past, the secondary was the weak link of the Steelers’ defense. It was widely known that while teams may not have been able to run the ball on Pittsburgh, you could have success throwing it.

That has changed in more recent years, and 2012 was no exception. Read the rest of this entry »

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End of Ravenstahl Era Impacts Pittsburgh Steelers Fans Everywhere

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2013 Offseason, AFC North, Pittsburgh Steelers, SteelerAddicts, Steelers Fans

March 3, 2013

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Quite a tumultuous week it’s been in Pittsburgh.

On Friday, just 11 days after saying he would run again, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl announced he would not seek re-election after all.

Then on Saturday, the shit really hit the fan.

Ben Roethlisberger became a year older.

Roethlisberger’s 31st birthday is a reminder that he won’t be around forever, either. Ravenstahl’s announcement Friday probably won’t impact Pittsburgh’s mood nearly as much as Roethlisberger’s eventual farewell.

Even Ravenstahl made his love for the Steelers a part of his legacy as mayor. He petitioned to change his name from “Ravenstahl” to “Steelerstahl” in 2009, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, when the Steelers played the Ravens in the AFC Championship Game.

Ravenstahl plucked a line from Bill Cowher’s retirement press conference Friday when, according to the Post-Gazette, he said “This North Side boy has lived his dream.”

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Don’t Expect The Steelers To Trade Within The First Round Of The 2013 NFL Draft

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2013 NFL Draft, 2013 Offseason, AFC North, Pittsburgh Steelers, SteelerAddicts

March 2, 2013

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It seems like every year leading up to the NFL Draft, all of us fans are hoping that the Pittsburgh Steelers trade down in the first round and accumulate more picks. It seems like it would interest any team, let alone the Steelers, to be able to gain more draft picks and still get a solid player with their first selection. The only problem is that the Steelers hardly, if ever, trade their first round pick and in fact the team has only traded within the first round four times since 1990. In that span they have traded up twice in the first round to take S Troy Polamalu 2003 and WR Santonio Holmes 2006, and down twice to take NT Casey Hampton 2001 and TE Eric Green 1990.
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2012 Grades, Position by Position, Linebackers

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2012 Regular Season, Defense, Linebackers, Pittsburgh Steelers, Report Cards

February 24, 2013

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For the Steelers’ defense, the rubber has always met the road with the play of the linebackers. There is a great, grand tradition of linebacker play in the Steel City, dating back to Jack Lambert and Jack Ham; through Levon Kirkland, Greg Lloyd, and Kevin Greene; to Joey Porter and James Harrison. Linebacker play has been the heart and soul of the Steelers’ defense. Read the rest of this entry »

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Grading the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Round-by-Round Value in the 2010 NFL Draft

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AFC North, Pittsburgh Steelers, Report Cards, SteelerAddicts

February 23, 2013

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Where there was so much hubris a year earlier, a dark cloud hung over the Pittsburgh Steelers as they prepared for the 2010 NFL Draft.

Just like they did three years earlier, the Steelers flopped as defending champions, missing the playoffs in 2009. The organization was disgraced further when Ben Roethlisberger’s transgressions in Milledgeville, Ga., came to light.

Roethlisberger never was charged with a crime, but still faced a suspension at the beginning of the 2010 season. That surely wouldn’t help a team trying to bounce back from a disappointing 9-7 season. Disaster seemed imminent.

It turned out things weren’t as bad as they seemed for the Steelers.

Football as it’s known to the rest of the world took sport’s grandest stage in 2010. The word “vuvuzela” was added to the vocabulary of anyone who watched the World Cup in South Africa. Those horns that collectively sounded like a swarm of bees provided the soundtrack of the summer.

Pittsburgh rapper Wiz Khalifa created a buzz in the fall with his hit single “Black and Yellow.” It wasn’t exactly a Pittsburgh version of Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind,” but it found a place with the “Steelers Polka,” “Here We Go Steelers” and “Renegade” in the anthology of Steelers anthems.

The timing couldn’t have been better. “Black and Yellow” blasted in Steelers bars all over the country as the black and gold went all the way to the Super Bowl. Just days after “Black and Yellow” became the No.1 song in the land, the Steelers settled for No. 2 in the NFL with their loss to the Packers.

Despite their Super Bowl disappointment, 2010 became a memorable year for the Steelers, and that year’s draft had a lot to do with it.

For an explanation of our value grading system, click here.

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