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Some Possible 1st Round Picks
I’m no expert on the draft. In fact, I’m pretty much always wrong. I don’t follow college football very closely and pay little attention to these issues until the draft rolls around. In other words, at best my opinion is a gnat’s eyelash away from completely worthless. But that won’t stop me from posting an article on the subject anyway.
Based on history, my expectation is that the Steelers will effectively position themselves with pre-draft signings in order to avoid having to pick a particular position, and thus will be able to pick best available player from a pool of several positions of need. It seems clear that the majority of their picks should be for defense because they have so many areas to improve on that side of the ball, but even so the first pick could go either way. My guess is they will take the best available player from TE, WR, CB, OLB, and possibly DL.
I thought it would be fun to look at who might be there at spot 15 from among that subset of positions. For this exercise, I like to use WalterFootball.com as they do a pretty nice job of living and breathing this stuff year round. They usually summarize players in each category by indicating which round they feel the player will fall. If they feel the player will fall in the early part of the first round, they will indicate that the player is likely a “top 20” pick, for example. For our purposes we can consider players listed as likely first round, or as likely top 20, but of course it’s possible or even probably that one or more “likely top 10” picks will fall to the Steelers, as this seems to happen annually.
I’m only providing a partial snapshot of the information from WalterFootball.com. If you want to read more about these players, go directly to that site.
2013 Prediction Review
Looking back at our predictions for 2013, I think we can say we’re pretty smart, but not as smart as we like to think.
As a group, we picked the Bengals to take the division, followed by the Steelers, the Ravens, and the Browns. We nailed that one.
Our individual results were not so accurate, however.
Nobody picked the Steelers to finish 8-8. Nobody. Given that we like to think of ourselves as Steelers experts, clearly we’re a bit deluded about that. The closest were bills and jeffmi who picked the Steelers to go 7-9. [Edit: it seems that malsor did make an accurate prediction of 8-8 although it was late and therefore not in my summary table. However, he only gets partial credit for victory because he also predicted 6-10, plus a whole bunch of other stuff of mixed accuracy, depending on this and that and the other thing. Next time, the rule will be to go with one prediction and one only.]
One person, mwalsh, accurately predicted the Bengals to finish at 11-5.
Four people accurately predicted that the Ravens would end up at 8-8: copanut (I blush), steeltyke, mack, and tompaulbillybob.
Nobody accurately predicted the Browns would win only 4 games. The closest were jamesh and steeltyke who picked them to win 6.
Let’s see if we can do better for 2014. The early betting line has the Steelers going 19-0, baby.
Glass Half Full Edition
These are some of the best things about the 2013 season:
- Big Ben and Troy Polamalu both played 16 full, healthy games and were as impactful as ever in their careers.
- Antonio Brown proved he is worthy of his contract.
- Le’Veon Bell showed why he was an excellent draft choice.
- The offensive line finally got it together and played credibly.
- Several players emerged into playmakers, including Cameron Heyward and Jason Worilds.
- The coaching staff, front office, and players remained focused and never gave up despite the dismal start. Indeed, they only grew stronger.
- Todd Haley and Ben seem to be on to something.
- Ben and Antonio are proving to be as good a tandem as any in recent memory, with the kind of chemistry we used to see with Ben and Hines.
Some other things for which I am grateful:
- Every game was meaningful and the Steeler season relevance extended, ever so briefly, beyond their final game.
- Although finishing at 8-8, I feel much better about this season. The 2012 edition ended in futility, while the 2013 edition ended with three credible wins.
- It wasn’t the Steelers’ kicker in a Steelers game who failed to kick a routine field goal in ideal conditions and thereby ending the Steelers season. That would have been much worse.
- The Ravens not only went from champions to a team missing the playoffs, but actually completely fell apart to end their season, finishing with two dismal losses and a raft of questions on both sides of the ball.
- The Ravens finished in third place, behind the Steelers, but the Steelers will get a better draft position.
- The Ravens are stuck with a ridiculous contract for an above average quarterback who reverted to his more mediocre self.
- Ray Rice seems to have lost it.
- The Browns are still the Browns – yet another coaching change is on the way.
- I don’t know what Goodell will do about the threatened draft penalty (but given the Ravens shooting themselves in the foot, plus the egregious failure of the league’s officiating forcing the Steelers out of the playoffs, there should be no penalty), however the Steelers should be in position to have a lot of decent picks from the upcoming draft.
- The Beard went out strong with a couple of excellent games (assuming he doesn’t come back).
- The team has evolved from the immaturity and selfishness that had become more common the past couple of years.
- We have a good group here at Steel Balls.
What did you think was the best thing emerging from this season? Vote below. If you have other items to add, please post a comment.
[poll id=”14″]
Hold On to Your Hats ‘N Glasses
Just to be sure we’re all on the same page, here is the breakdown of tomorrow’s sixth seed possibilities. In short, the Steelers need the end result of the day to be a five-way tie at 8-8. That sounds bad (and it is), but none of the four contenders control their own destiny. (While the Jets could match the records of the four contenders, they have no tiebreaker path to the playoffs, thus they will be playing the role of spoiler and playing for the life of their coach.)
Source: BleacherReport
