The Colts are sending wide receiver Michael Pittman to the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Hayden, simple question.

All right.

The Steelers' offense now has Michael Pittman and D.K. Metcalf at wide receiver. Is it difficult to

even talk about them when we don't even know who's throwing them passes in 2026? Well, I'm guessing

it's just going to be Rogers because right away, I thought this was like a move to make Rogers happy.

It is a good compliment to D.K. Metcalfe, like he was going to stretch the field vertically.

And then Michael Pittman, even though they're both like outside players michael pitman slants dig routes out routes curls that type of thing which dk mackaf has largely struggled with and rogers kind of needs you know both of them so uh just looking around the league there's not malik willis has gone you know kiley murgues probably not going to the sealers and stuff i'm guessing it will be rogers so that's how I'm kind of taking this conversation. So good compliment, good like one, two punch. Not super exciting, but this keeps the Steelers rolling. And we'll get to the other half of this. This was the shoe to drop after the Colts re-signed. Alex Pierce gave the transition tag over to Daniel Jones because Michael Pittman was either going to be cut or traded for a late round pick swap. I mean, he had no guaranteed money left on his contract. The Colts saved $24 million by doing this deal. I mean, if you look at the raw stats, we do have two 1,000 yard seasons here from Michael Pittman, one in 2021, and then one in

2023, then obviously a rough 2024 and then an injurely riddled 2025.

We'll talk about the injuries here in a moment.

But when you watch and look at Michael Pittman now in 2026, what do you think he does best? I think it's all the in-breaking stuff. He's a good contested catch, a big wide target over the middle of the field. So he's just going to be doing some of the dirty work stuff. You can't kick him inside the Steelers because they have so many tight ends, even without Johnny Smith, are going to have a lot of two wide receiver

sets. And I think Alex, or not Alex Pierce, Michael Pittman could certainly handle a lot of that.

I think the contract extension, I find really interesting as well. So when the Colts get rid of

them, the Steelers inherit $24 million for this year. They extend him at $19 million per year. Even though the salary cap's going up, Michael Pittman's contract is going down. So that's how little value, yes, of course, that Michael Pittman's contract was that they're inheriting. That's why it was just a pure late round pick swap here. They got a matter of reasonable contract moving for. I think he's a fine NFL wide receiver two, even though there's not going to be a crazy ceiling now. I'm laughing, but this is a better wide receiver too than like trotting out Calvin Alston or Roman Wilson and these guys. Oh, by far. And that's what they had been doing. And I like your point, if this is Rogers or if it's not, of what they did with D.K.

Metcalf last year was totally against everything we had seen of D.K. Metcalf as a wide

receiver in the NFL in terms of taking his best traits and basically not utilizing them.

They turned him into a low A dot player and then asked him to win after the catch.

Now, a lot of that is because of, you know, who Aaron Rogers is at this point. Doesn't want to get hit. Doesn't want to extend plays. He wants to get the football out of his hands as quickly as possible. Slant flat, slant flat over and over and over again. And that's just what we have. That fits Michael Pittman much better. I mean, the RPO's that the,

the Colts ran and the quick hitters, that's where Michael Pittman, again, despite all these

aches and pains during his last few seasons, I mean, we can talk about groin pulls, knee bruises.

We know about the back sprain that, remember the week that it's like, oh, his season's going to be over,

he's going to have surgery.

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