Fox Sports’ analyst Nick Wright is putting on his general manager hat and telling Omar Khan what he should’ve done during the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 2025 offseason. Safe to say, Wright would’ve done things a lot differently. Appearing on Colin Cowherd’s The Herd Tuesday, Wright detailed his plan.
“I would’ve taken a totally different tactic this offseason,” Wright said. “I wouldn’t have traded for DK Metcalf. I still would’ve traded away George Pickens. And I would’ve, as we are now seeing with T.J. Watt wanting a new contract, I would’ve traded T.J. Watt to get a first-round pick and something else. And I would’ve said, Mason Rudolph, you’re the man.”
For the franchise, Pittsburgh made the unprecedented move to acquire Metcalf on the eve of free agency. A blockbuster deal that sent a 2025 second-round pick to the Seattle Seahawks in exchange for Metcalf, whom the team immediately gave a $150 million deal. The largest ever handed out to an outside addition. While Pittsburgh’s Super Bowl window isn’t open now, the thinking is similar to the team’s trade for FS Minkah Fitzpatrick in 2019, a move that had the present and the future in mind.
Clearly, Wright isn’t sold on Pittsburgh adding Rodgers. Either because he believes it’s a bad fit or because Rodgers would play “too” well for the Steelers, preventing the team from landing a high 2026 draft pick.
The only area Wright was in alignment with was trading away Pickens. Pittsburgh shipped him to the Dallas Cowboys for a 2026 third-round selection. Despite Pickens’ gaudy talent, he brought equally big headaches. Entering a contract year and with no chance of seeing an extension, the Steelers decided that trading him for future capital was the best approach.
Watt’s contract situation ramped up another notch Tuesday when he failed to report for the team’s minicamp. A different approach than even his previous contract year, 2021, when he attended minicamp, Watt is now subject to upwards of $100,000 in fines should he no-show on Wednesday and Thursday. The debate about trading Watt has gone on since last season and only intensified this offseason as Watt is potentially looking to become the highest-paid pass rusher in football. If so, that would put him above the $40 million average yearly value Cleveland Browns DE Myles Garrett netted earlier this offseason.
While Watt’s still a top-end pass rusher, determining his value is tricky. He’s in his 30s and would require a massive deal from any team trading for him, two elements that hurt his trade value. He might command less on the open market than Wright thinks. Still, his plan was to tear the team down and rebuild.
“I would’ve run that team out there for one year to force a hard reset,” Wright said. “To go into next year’s draft with multiple firsts, multiple seconds. Clean up their cap. Their own really good pick. And have a reset from there.”
Financially, the Steelers aren’t in cap danger, and if anything, as Dave Bryan has pointed out, they need to increase their cap spending to reach the league’s three-year 90-percent threshold. A rule that prevents the all-out tank Wright is suggesting, and a consideration that likely hasn’t occurred to him.
Pittsburgh figures to be in the market for one of the top quarterbacks of next year’s draft, whoever that might be. While Wright’s point is understandable in a narrow sense, the Steelers are still in a position to land a quarterback in 2026. It will likely require trading up in the draft, but their coffers are full of picks—possibly 12 in total with five in the top three rounds.
The Steelers’ plan appears to be utilizing the past three drafts to build up the trenches, with their 2025 picks focused on the defensive line. In 2026, the mission will be finding a quarterback. That’s something Wright can at least agree on.
