2019 Steelers by position: WR. Are we better off?

[Captain Lemming]

gronk played a pretty important role in the pats passing game though. His name is mentioned by analysts when discussing the all time best tight ends

Why do people argue a point I never tried to make.
I never referred to Tight ends.....intentionally.

That said as great as Gronk is.....how REALLY impactful was he on the Pats dynasty?
He played in but TWO Superbowl victories.

The best record the Pats have had During Gronks career......14-2 in plus SB win in 2016.
Gronk missed half the season.
Both losses were in the first 8 games of the season.....when Gronk actually played.
Undefeated EVERY GAME GRONK MISSED- 8 straight plus 3 postseason.....11 straight including SB WITHOUT Gronk.

Fact is if you take out the slow 3 TD version we saw last season.....HOF caliber Gronk has ONE SB victory.

Our former backup runningback Legarette Blount has made FAR GREATER contributions to SB victories running the ball than HOF caliber Gronk has receiving.

Am I saying they were better off without him? No.
Is he a great tight end? Yes.

But his ACTUAL VALUE when it comes to wins and losses when Brady has 4 rings WITHOUT Gronk is WAY overstated.

[NJ-STEELER]

Why do people argue a point I never tried to make.

That said as great as Gronk is.....he played in but TWO Superbowl victories.

The best record the Pats have had in his career......14-2 in plus SB win in 2016.
Gronk missed half the season.
Both losses were in the first 8 games of the season.....when Gronk actually played.
Undefeated EVERY GAME GRONK MISSED- 8 straight plus 3 postseason.....11 straight including SB WITHOUT Gronk.

Fact is if you take out the slow 3 TD version we saw last season.....HOF caliber Gronk has ONE SB victory.

Am I saying they were better off without him? No.
Is he a great tight end? Yes.

But his ACTUAL VALUE when it comes to wins and losses when Brady has 4 rings WITHOUT Gronk is WAY overstated.

sorry, but what are you trying to say then?

there's plenty of examples of HOF WR being on SB teams or SB caliber teams. just look at the 70s steeler teams.

are you trying to infer that the passing game doesn't matter ?
Having a Top WR doesn't matter?

what are you trying to get at?

[Captain Lemming]

Just realized......Brady is undefeated in SBs when he is without a HOF caliber pass catcher.

[NJ-STEELER]

Just realized......Brady is undefeated in SBs when he is without a HOF caliber pass catcher.

you know you have to win a few games just to get to the SB. Do you think he didn't help there?


again
WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY?

[Captain Lemming]

sorry, but what are you trying to say then?

there's plenty of examples of HOF WR being on SB teams or SB caliber teams. just look at the 70s steeler teams.

are you trying to infer that the passing game doesn't matter ?
Having a Top WR doesn't matter?

what are you trying to get at?

I said "in the last decade" no HOF caliber receiver has a ring.

Here is my point. Better talent at EVERY POSITION is good. But you have to know the relative value of different positions to build a winning team.
For example.....I want a GREAT punter.....but everybody knows it is stupid to pay a punter like a QB.

Wide receiver is the most overpaid position in the NFL. Paying top dollar for HOF talent is stupid, because the value is not commensurate with real wins and losses in todays NFL.
I keep telling people......look at defensive backs.......invest there. Great ones.....most have rings. Think about it.

Look at our playoff loss to the Pats a couple years ago.
They handled our HOF caliber receiver receiver, and our weak secondary make their Lacross player look like Jerry Rice.

As I said earlier we need to know what we have before calling this group better or worse.

With that said, we dont need to panic for having lost a "great" receiver.

Edelman and San-stonio BOTH have what Brown, Moss, AND even Gronk dont have, SB MVPs.

[Steel Maniac]

I agree with Cap; we have enough at wide receiver. We need to get our secondary up to snuff. All these “ experiment” players in the secondary is becoming tired to me. Haden is legit, everyone else is a maybe. Personally, id have liked to bite the bullet and go after Peterson of the Cardinals. If the goal is still to win while we have Ben, I do t see enough urgency from Colbert to get that secondary up to par.

[Captain Lemming]

BTW, I believe I was THE ONLY ONE HERE who argued agaist signing Brown.

I debated Dizz who said, "who should we have signed"?

I said we should have gone after Gilmore and spent Brown dough on him. I argued that the Pats invest in secondary, and it works.
He mocked me when Gilmore had a rough start as a Pat.

He was the REAL SB MVP.

He was the top rated corner last season.

https://www.profootballfocus.com/news/pro-stephon-gilmore-jc-jackson-enter-the-2019-season-as-one-the-nfls-top-cornerback-duos

Once again:

[Steel Maniac]

BTW, I believe I was THE ONLY ONE HERE who argued agaist signing Brown.

I debated Dizz who said, "who should we have signed"?

I said we should have gone after Gilmore and spent Brown dough on him. I argued that the Pats invest in secondary, and it works.
He mocked be when Gilmore had a rough start as a Pat.

https://www.profootballfocus.com/news/pro-stephon-gilmore-jc-jackson-enter-the-2019-season-as-one-the-nfls-top-cornerback-duos

Once again:

Cap , I was on your side but your right; the vast majority was with Brown. Well, the FO has only learned half a lesson. Still won’t really invest in the secondary.

[Captain Lemming]

I agree with Cap; we have enough at wide receiver. We need to get our secondary up to snuff. All these “ experiment” players in the secondary is becoming tired to me. Haden is legit, everyone else is a maybe. Personally, id have liked to bite the bullet and go after Peterson of the Cardinals. If the goal is still to win while we have Ben, I do t see enough urgency from Colbert to get that secondary up to par.

Recent teams with multiple top level secondary players? Legion of doom Seahawks and the ring wearing Broncos.

[NJ-STEELER]

I said "in the last decade" no HOF caliber receiver has a ring.

Here is my point. Better talent at EVERY POSITION is good. But you have to know the relative value of different positions to build a winning team.
For example.....I want a GREAT punter.....but everybody knows it is stupid to pay a punter like a QB.

Wide receiver is the most overpaid position in the NFL. Paying top dollar for HOF talent is stupid, because the value is not commensurate with real wins and losses in todays NFL.
I keep telling people......look at defensive backs.......invest there. Great ones.....most have rings. Think about it.

Look at our playoff loss to the Pats a couple years ago.
They handled our HOF caliber receiver receiver, and our weak secondary make their Lacross player look like Jerry Rice.

As I said earlier we need to know what we have before calling this group better or worse.

With that said, we dont need to panic for having lost a "great" receiver.

Edelman and San-stonio BOTH have what Brown, Moss, AND even Gronk dont have, SB MVPs.

ok. I sort of agree with you. just didn't know what your angle was.

yes, you don't need a HOF caliber WR to win, but I believe they better be good enough as a group to win. I feel they are still good enough now with out antonio and with the addition of moncrief and the 2nd rd pick.

im excited to see the ball spread around a bit more without the crying WR complaining he didn't get the ball


and yes, getting better in the secondary will help. i've been on that train before they started to address it with top picks in the draft on that area

[RuthlessBurgher]

Cap , I was on your side but your right; the vast majority was with Brown. Well, the FO has only learned half a lesson. Still won’t really invest in the secondary.

In the last 5 drafts, we spent a 1st, a 2nd, and two 3rd round picks on corners, plus signed Joe Haden and Steven Nelson in free agency. We also spent a 1st and a 2nd round pick on safeties plus signed Morgan Burnett as well.

The FO has obviously only learned half a lesson. When are they going to really invest in the secondary?

And as for your Patrick Peterson solution, if Arizona was willing to trade him, it would have happened as a part of their rebuild. Teams aren't willing to just hand over future HoF level talents who are still in their prime (unless they transform themselves into a bleached mustache wearing, money hungry, Twitter crazy lunatic).

[hawaiiansteel]

JuJu Smith-Schuster Denies Animosity Toward Brown: ‘To Have Hate Is Such A Strong Word’

By Matthew Marczi
Posted on May 5, 2019

It’s been over two years now, and 2017 second-round pick JuJu Smith-Schuster is still the youngest player in the Pittsburgh Steelers’ wide receivers room, that distinction no belonging either to 2018 second-round selection James Washington nor to 2019 third-round selection Diontae Johnson.

In spite of the fact that he remains among the youngest players on the team—he will turn 23 in November—he has consistently displayed a maturity, when it counts, beyond his years, even when he was still just 20 years old. Even before he played a down, that included handling the personalities of his seniors. And that continues to be the case, even when they’re gone.

From Martavis Bryant Tweeting that Smith-Schuster was going to be Sammie Coates’ replacement rather than his on the day he was drafted to Antonio Brown calling the fellow Pro Bowler out and accusing him of being dishonest because he hasn’t gotten paid yet, he has successfully navigated a minefield and come out virtually unscathed.

The dissolution of his relationship with Brown, however, was likely particularly rough for him, as he was a player that he routinely went to bat for with the media whenever Brown was questioned, whether it was concerns about his early struggles on the field last season or the many off-field questions that were raised, including pertaining to his leadership role for the younger players at the position.

Smith-Schuster looked up to Brown based on what he accomplished and what he has put himself through in order to achieve those feats, but it has been a long road to disillusionment. Even during the period in which Brown was badmouthing the team trying to get traded, he had to field questions from TMZ reporters about their relationship, and would only offer, “he’s my guy”.

Fast forward a couple months, and a couple of public shots, and we have Smith-Schuster being asked basically if he hates Brown at this point, which he denied any ill will. “To have hate is such a strong word and to have that towards someone, there is no need for that”, he said, according to Andrew Stockey of WTAE.

Would that be true the other way? Perhaps Brown doesn’t and never hated Smith-Schuster, but he certainly grew jealous of all the attention the new baby was receiving, not just from the fans, the media, and the coaches, but from quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. Then he was voted team MVP and joined him in the Pro Bowl (which Brown backed out of).

These questions are still being asked now, but with football in shorts now just around the corner, that entire story is going to increasingly fall into the background noise, and hopefully largely be forgotten about. Brown is a Raider, and the Steelers are forging on with JuJu, James, Johnson, and the rest of the bunch.

https://steelersdepot.com/2019/05/juju-smith-schuster-denies-animosity-toward-brown-to-have-hate-is-such-a-strong-word/

[Northern_Blitz]

Cap , I was on your side but your right; the vast majority was with Brown. Well, the FO has only learned half a lesson. Still won’t really invest in the secondary.

I think it's a false dichotomy to say we went with Brown over secondary.

The Steelers sign guys they drafted to big contracts over bringing in big name UFAs. My guess is that this is a good call because you don't have to project how good someone from a different system will fit on your team. Humans suck at predicting the future, so it makes sense to limit the predictions you need to make.

When they draft a HOF caliber player, they always extend him (or at least do their best see: Bell). That's their MO. I'm sure they would have loved it if they hit big on a DB, but instead we got elite players at WR and RB.

I think the GMs job is essentially (1) get good players and (2) keep good players. That's what Colbert did here. We would have wanted a better result, but I think the process is sound.

[Steel Maniac]

I disagree; that sounds good but the reality is that now , in today’s NFL, you have to know what positions really to invest big dollars in long term. And based on what wide receivers look like that are winning Super Bowls the past 10-15 years, putting big dollars in the wide receiver position long term, isn’t logical.

The super bowl winners bear this out as fact. Captain Lemmings is spot on with this one. He’s given us fact, results that really can’t be argued.

[Northern_Blitz]

I disagree; that sounds good but the reality is that now , in today’s NFL, you have to know what positions really to invest big dollars in long term. And based on what wide receivers look like that are winning Super Bowls the past 10-15 years, putting big dollars in the wide receiver position long term, isn’t logical.

The super bowl winners bear this out as fact. Captain Lemmings is spot on with this one. He’s given us fact, results that really can’t be argued.

I think the "don't spend too much on WRs and RBs" framework is a good guiding principle.

But, you do have to make real time decisions on players. It's fine to say we shouldn't have signed AB or Bell past their rookie contracts in isolation, but I think we also have to look at what we could have done instead.

If the arguement is we should have signed a big name UFA instead of signing AB, I'm not convinced that's a good process. Without running the data, my guess is that big budget UFAs are far less likely to live up to their contract than internal UFAs. You have to pay market value for elite external UFAs, and my guess is players almost never live up to market value over the life of their contracts.

I'm not saying that Colbert is like this, but some GMs with cap room to spare feel like they have to spend it in the first week of the UFA period. I think most of those huge early contracts are bad.

I think the biggest test of this theory might come at QB.

The view on WRs seems to be something like "never allocate more than X% of the cap to individual WRs (or RBs) because teams don't win SBs that way".

I wonder what the highest allocation of cap for QBs SB winning teams have over the last decade or so. My guess is that it's lower than what we've committed to Ben for the next two years. If so, would that mean that we should have let Ben walk to try to get a good QB on a rookie deal? Or is it better to keep elite players you already have on your roster.

It's also worth noting that the Pats screw up all of these "success over the past two decades" type analyses. Their QB takes appreciably less than market value, so it sets the culture of the organization. The way to win in salary cap leagues is to pay players below what they are worth...preferably elite ones.