There comes a time for every NFL franchise where good enough just isn’t good enough anymore, and that’s where we find the Pittsburgh Steelers ahead of the 2025 season.
The latest offseason move out of Pittsburgh was first reported by ESPN’s Adam Schefter as a player-for-player swap, sending Steelers safety Minkah Fitzpatrick to Miami (where his career began) in exchange for cornerback Jalen Ramsey. Later, the full details came to include tight end Jonnu Smith also heading to Pittsburgh, and a currently unspecified—but likely conditional—draft pick going back to Miami. Pittsburgh is a team that, since about 2018, has been wading through the seas of mediocrity, so it's exciting to watch this sudden change in its team-building approach. And with these new additions joining quarterback Aaron Rodgers and receiver D.K. Metcalf, the Steelers have reoriented themselves as a franchise that’s going all in to chase a championship in 2025.
There’s only one issue: I’m not convinced that any of the new veterans in black and yellow will actually get this franchise, and head coach Mike Tomlin, much closer to that goal.
In a vacuum, each of the Steelers’ additions makes sense. But taken in conjunction, it’s a struggle to envision the practical gains of some of these moves. Let’s start with Jalen Ramsey. His biggest selling point will also be his biggest question mark in Pittsburgh: How will the Steelers best utilize his positional versatility? At his peak in Los Angeles, Ramsey was arguably the best outside corner and slot defender in the NFL, and his usage reflected it. It’s still my belief that when Ramsey’s in the slot, he’s one of the best players in the NFL. But his time spent there took a dip once he was traded to Miami, and the increased time on the perimeter (especially in man coverage) has done him a disservice. As an outside corner in man coverage the past two years, Ramsey has allowed a passer rating of 105.9—the league average in those situations is 92.4. In the slot, Ramsey’s passer rating allowed drops to 87.7, significantly below the 104.7 league average.
Given how much the Steelers enjoy playing man coverage—they ranked sixth in the NFL in man usage over the past two seasons, at 31.4 percent—it should be easy to drop Ramsey in the slot and reap the benefits. However, because bringing him in cost them Fitzpatrick, there’s some belief that the Steelers could have Ramsey spend time at safety to fill a hole in the depth chart. Ramsey is certainly capable of occupying that role—he was arguably the best safety in college football in 2015 (the last time he played that position full-time). And because of his time at Florida State and how he’s played in the NFL when he’s been closer to the ball, I’ve long thought that he could make a Rod Woodson–esque transition to extend his career. But that was working under an assumption of choice, not necessity.
Ultimately, this is a good problem for Pittsburgh to have in a player, and I expect Ramsey to make a big impact whether he’s in the slot or deep in the defensive backfield. But I’d hesitate to state outright that this changes Pittsburgh's ceiling defensively, and if 34-year-old cornerback Darius Slay has to miss time due to injury, Ramsey may be asked to kick back outside and face similar issues as he had in Miami. I’d approach his and Pittsburgh’s immediate future with cautious optimism, even though he’s the most valuable asset in this deal.
Moving to Jonnu Smith, he’s a valuable addition to any offense that’s looking to improve its efficiency in the red zone and on third down. Over the past two seasons, Smith ranks among the top 12 tight ends in touchdowns scored and yards per route in the red zone, and top 15 in third-down targets that move the chains at 52.6 percent. Even in recognizing that 2024’s high-volume production was an outlier in his career (he’d never amassed more than 600 yards or 50 receptions prior to last season), his efficiency metrics still suggest that he’s one of the dozen or so most valuable receiving threats at his position.
The problem with applying Smith’s biggest strengths to this reworked Pittsburgh offense is that this team may already have a more effective version of Smith with Pat Freiermuth. Freiermuth is fourth among tight ends in red zone touchdowns, second in yards per route in the red zone, and just two-tenths of a percentage point behind Smith in third-down targets that move the chains. Freiermuth isn’t just picking up cheap yardage, either. In fact, his average route depth on targets is deeper than Smith in the red zone and on third down—and I’d argue that both players are similarly versatile and explosive as athletes.
While it's never an inherent problem to have multiple efficient receivers at tight end, you have to question whether offensive coordinator Arthur Smith can build an offense that balances its personnel usage within the scheme and pairs well with Rodgers’s play style at quarterback. The Steelers’ present-day receiving corps is built similarly to the Titans’ when Smith was offensive coordinator there in 2019 and 2020. Those offenses were viable because Derrick Henry spearheaded one of the league’s five best rushing attacks, and that set up Tennessee’s play-action passing game—its 34 percent rate was second only to Baltimore's over that two-season span.
Rodgers’s offenses in Green Bay, meanwhile, had a 28 percent play-action rate over the same span, much closer to the 25 percent league average. And for as efficient as Rodgers was in his last two MVP seasons, there was always a bit of tension between him and head coach Matt LaFleur over who got the final say in what the offense did. Rodgers prefers to have carte blanche at the line of scrimmage, and that can run afoul of the intent of this scheme, which is to set up a series of plays to attack cracks in defensive structures. Now, Rodgers and Arthur Smith will have to work out who has control of the proverbial wheel on a down-to-down basis, and they won’t have a generational talent at running back who can make this style of offense work most optimally.
At the center of all this activity and subsequent uncertainty is Tomlin, who seems to have rallied this organization around one more big push to contend in 2025—and maybe one last push. When you look at this team’s roster and cap situation, it’s clear it hasn’t been built with much consideration about what’s to come in 2026 and beyond. There is no imminent plan at quarterback after this year; star edge rusher T.J. Watt is still without a contract extension (and teams are inquiring about his availability); and of all the high-profile players Pittsburgh has brought in this offseason, Metcalf is the only one who’ll be younger than 30 at the time of this season’s opening kickoff.
This team is clearly designed to win right now, and right now only. Yet for all the player movement into and out of Pittsburgh, Rodgers is (optimistically) the only guy this franchise brought in that introduces a new dynamic to the roster. Swapping out George Pickens for Metcalf, Fitzpatrick for Ramsey, and Jonnu Smith taking snaps away from Pittsburgh’s third-best receiver all feel like solutions to non-issues. This isn’t just my pessimism, either: The Steelers’ Super Bowl odds only marginally improved on FanDuel after this deal, and their over/under on wins still stands at 8.5 games.
After all of Pittsburgh’s activity this offseason, it's not likely that this year will finish any differently than those prior—and it might not be good enough to justify building this franchise in Tomlin’s image anymore.
