They rarely make trades. Free agents sometimes drop by for a visit, but the Steelers usually bring in guys who fit in more as depth than people who will compete for the starting job.
Consider the last two marquee names to come to Pittsburgh as free agent signings: Charlie Batch and Duce Staley. Batch, once a starter and still viewed by many as a high-quality player who could start for a number of teams, and whose real talents weren’t realized in a dysfunctional Lions organization. Staley, brought in to take up the majority of the carries from an aging Jerome Bettis, suffered an injury that was pretty much inevitable, given his history. That injury, and a number of others, eventually led to his release two seasons later. Between the two, the difference is night and day, but the one common point is that they are the two biggest names to come to Pittsburgh as free agents in recent years — and that’s really not saying much.
The Rooneys built an empire on conservative stability, opting to spot young talent in college rather than pick up another team’s table scraps. Because, in reality, there are three kinds of free agents.
Crash-and-Burners
These guys spend their first two, three or four years with one team, usually with average to outrageously high salaries. They are players who had potential, but either didn’t live up to it or just didn’t fit into the system in which they played. Sometimes you have exceptions, like #1 draft pick David Carr who will probably excel on a team that has some semblence of an offensive line, but more often than not they are the T.J. Ducketts and Ryan Leafs of the world. There’s a reason their team doesn’t want them anymore.
Big Names, Huge Paychecks
Sometimes a player may be a stud, but he’s just not affordable (maybe it’s his money, maybe it’s his ego). Consider this the reason Joey Porter is no longer a Steeler, and why guys like Adalius Thomas, Nick Harper and Leonard Davis will all be with new teams in 2007.
Past Their Prime
Other players are just looking for a place to retire. Unless a team has an immediate need for a veteran — a desperation, if you will — it’s hard to imagine a player in this category being signed. If they’ve been an integral part of their team’s success for a legthy period, they may be re-signed, or offered an extension before they ever hit the market. Otherwise this is usually where journeymen end up, playing only for teams desperate enough to sign them. Jerry Jones is probably wishing he hadn’t given the starting quarterback job to guys like Vinny Testaverde and Drew Bledsoe over the last few years.
The fact of the matter is that you don’t get more successful by signing players who never lived up to the hype, money doesn’t always translate into success, and putting a long-time veteran into a new system is usually begging for disaster. The Steelers have long looked to the draft for talent, and have had crazy success with it: Faneca, Troy Polamalu, Ben Roethlisberger, Heath Miller, the linebacker-du-jour, Casey Hampton, Hines Ward — see a trend emerging here? Sure, there have been numerous draft-day missteps, like passing on Dan Marino and not passing on Jamain Stephens. But more often than not, they’ve made ESP-like calls that have kept them at or near the top of the AFC year after year. They’ve even had the occasional success with undrafted rookie free agents, like Willie Parker and Dan Kreider. By largely avoiding free agency, they’ve kept the team young and free of other teams’ castoffs.
And it’s worked like a charm.
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