Welcome back to the PFF NFL show.

Trevor Sikkim and Dalton Washman here with you guys once again.

Still talking free agency, but taking you guys back to school.

We're doing grades for certain teams in free agency.

Over the next week, week and a half-ish, we're taking this journey where we're going to go through all of the grades

and view a lot of the major signings, re- resignings, and even potentially we'll talk about moves that maybe we thought teams were going to make, some positions that we thought they were going to upgrade, that they didn't, which goes into overall grades courtesy of this man next to me here, Dalton Wassman. Dalton, you wrote the article for this one. So you've already done a lot of the heavy lifting here.

So this is mainly going to be me asking you to expound upon a lot of what you already put out over at pff.com. And I'm going to tell you whether I agree or disagree with it. So how are we feeling today, my friend? Pretty good, pretty good. I think this is going to be a fun exercise, especially when we have to probably tweak some things on the fly as new moves are being made.

But free agency has definitely slowed down.

And otherwise, Trev, you know, I'm not usually one to complain about the cold and the weather and all that, but I'll be honest with you in the middle of March, it does not need to be a feels like of 17 degrees here in Cincinnati. Not a huge fan of that. So just trying to stay warm here and stay loose, you know? Last two days when I've walked my dog in the morning, it has been right around 30 degrees here in lovely Charlotte, North Carolina. And yeah, I'm over it. I'm over it. I'm over the cold. We had a little bit. We had a little bit of spring. We got a little bit of a feel of what's to come here in the summer. And I agree with you. Let's get back to that weather. We need to get back to that weather. Humanity, society. We all need for it to officially be springtime. But I think it is at the end of the week. So we're not too far removed from that. You want to do the AFC North? We're doing the AFC North and the NFC North. You want to do the AFC North first? Is that sound good to you? Yeah, let's go AFC first. All right. So let's start with the Pittsburgh Steelers here, which you gave the Pittsburgh Steelers a B plus here. Okay. They re-signed Assangeante Samuel Jr. They traded for Michael Pittman,

Jr., which goes into this, of course. Signed Jamel Dean. They lost James Pierre,

but they signed Jamel Dean for that cornerback spot. Signed Rico Dowdell as well. Lost Kenneth

Gamewell, but they signed Rico Dowdell. Signed safe to Gijiquan. Brisker.

Thoughts overall. B-plus. I mean, that's a pretty good grade that you gave the Pittsburgh Steelers here. Kind of overall, your thoughts here, and then maybe what holds this back from an A? I think when you look, the first thing to me is at the secondary. Jamel Dean is actually a great fit in Patrick Graham's defense, first and foremost, even at the price that you got him at. And look, he's an experienced player. He's a consistent player. He's been really good for Tampa Bay for a long time. Maybe not one of the elite tier number one corners like the Rams getting Trent McDuffie, let's say. But I think as his own coverage player, especially in off coverage, a lot of cover three that Patrick Graham uses. He's a great fit.

And then I think getting Jaquan Brisker in on such a cheap contract to fill out that safety spot, I think is a really good move as well. Still a young player has had some injury issues, but there's still a lot of potential there. And I think he fits in this defense very, very well. And then some of the other moves, I mean, Michael Pittman, right, you get a number two receiver in there that's more reliable than anybody else that they've had in a wide receiving core that was really inconsistent last year, right, especially outside of D.K. Metcalf. And then the Rico Dowdell signing, I think, is a good one. If you're going to lose Kenneth Gainwell in free agency, yes, you lose something on the receiving front. But Dowdle is a hard runner. We saw in Carolina last year. He gets downhill. He creates yards after contact. So I think him and Jalen Warren is a really solid duo in the backfield. The quarterback question still needs to be answered. And I think they could have done more to address the left side, possibly of their offensive line, which leaves me out of an A here. And to be honest with you, for me doing these grades, it was tough to get an A. I think there was only three or four teams that even got an A minus. But I think when you look at Pittsburgh, I like to work in the secondary. I like to work with some of the skill positions on offense. We'll see what their quarterback situation looks like. And then I'm looking towards the left side of that offensive line. Tough grader. I'm not shocked at all whatsoever that you would be stingy to give out these A grades.

No, I agree with you on basically everything that you said about the Steelers,

how you're assessing the things that they acquired,

how they could have gotten better in certain spots.

Dowdell's interesting, right?

He's not the same type of running back that Kenneth Gainwell is, so it's not necessarily like a one-in-one out, but he, to me, is a little bit more of that early-down work type of a back. So leaning more into that with Jalen Warren as well. I like the Michael Pittman, Jr. ad. They had to get better at wide receiver, and it makes you feel like you don't have to go with wide receiver at number 21, right? I mean, when we were looking at this Steelers roster, that's what it felt like they had to do whenever we did mock draft exercises. Like, yeah, there's a quarterback question. Yeah, we'd like to maybe upgrade the offensive line like you mentioned. But it felt like wide receiver outside of DK Metcalf was so unreliable. You almost had to go with wide receiver there at number 21 if you weren't going with, you know, Ty Simpson as the common quarterback pick there for them in the first round. So I think they did a really good job giving themselves the flexibility to draft who they really want to at number 21.

And a lot of times that's what the free agency is all about.

So I do think that the Pittsburgh Steelers did a really good job there.

And now, yeah, I mean, I'm looking at that number 21 overall pick.

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