Dulac: Steelers WR room has ‘good potential’

The biggest problem on paper with the Pittsburgh Steelers roster is their expansive receiver room. The team traded Diontae Johnson this offseason and did not add another legitimate No. 2 receiver. Instead, the Steelers opted for more project-type players like Van Jefferson, Quez Watkins, and Scotty Miller, although the team drafted Michigan WR Roman Wilson in the third round and still had Calvin Austin III on the roster. . Recently appearing on the Rich Eisen Show, Gerry Dulac of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette believes the Steelers front office has “great potential” by 2024.

“We’ll see how Arthur Smith uses these guys. I’m not going to tell you it’s the best receiving room in team history, but I think it has good potential with the addition of Roman Wilson and they will keep their fingers after crossing Calvin Austin, they can use his speed like they imagined when they drafted him a few years ago,” Dulac said.

There doesn’t appear to be a viable option on the trade market at present, and many of the biggest names will likely remain with their current teams. This leaves the Steelers in a bind if they want to improve their room, but considering they haven’t done so yet, they might be happy with what they have in place. Dulac compared Wilson’s physique and hands to Hines Ward, which is a common comparison for Wilson, and landing with Pittsburgh obviously amplifies it.

Austin is an interesting case. A fourth-round pick in 2022, he missed his rookie season due to injury and didn’t offer much outside of a 72-yard touchdown run in Week 3 against the Las Vegas Raiders who, according to him, would be his coming out party. Austin struggles to catch traffic, but his speed is legitimate and Arthur Smith could try to get creative using it to create opportunities.

The other point is that Smith used the lowest three receiver sets in the league last season with the Falcons, so he could mix and match the receivers the Steelers need to take different looks on defense and also look to get the tight ends more involved. So it may not be as important for the Steelers to get this legitimate No. 2 caliber receiver behind George Pickens, especially in an offense that is going to try to establish the running game above all else.

Even though this is shorts football and it’s hard to draw any meaningful conclusions from it, the wide receiver group would have been impressive in OTAs, and while I’m a little nervous about how things will go wrong if they don’t make another addition this group could find themselves surprising.