For the Pittsburgh Steelers and Steeler Nation, extended Christmas Day is over. The presents that arrived courtesy of the 2022 NFL Draft have all been opened. The afternoon family presents courtesy of the undrafted free agent signings are all under the proverbial tree and we have moved into the gorging on stocking candy phase which is reviewing draft grades. The Steelers have gotten mostly positive reviews for their work in Kevin Colbert’s final draft. Mel Kiper and various other draft grades from top analysts are out, and I have enjoyed reading their reviews. But I came across the grades on CBSSports.com by Chis Trapasso and was in a word, "mystified."
In the immortal words of Ricky Bobby, “with all due respect, and remember I am saying with all due respect,” I am going to disagree.
First things first, Trapasso does not disparage the Steelers' draft. He gives them a B- and was a fan of the wide receivers the Steelers chose in rounds 2 and 4. In fact, he graded the Kenny Pickett, George Pickens and Calvin Austin III as A grades and DeMarvin Leal as a B. Trapasso gave the Steelers a C for Connor Heyward, a C- for Mark Robinson and a C+ for Chris Oladokun. The late round grades seem a little arbitrary, but overall, I don’t disagree heavily on 6th and 7th round draft evaluations. Trapasso summed up the Steelers draft by saying:
"Loved the two receiver picks for Pittsburgh, the prospects themselves and when they were selected. Kenny Pickett ahead of Malik Willis was questionable. DeMarvin Leal is a classic Steelers defensive lineman who can learn from Cam Heyward and Stephon Tuitt. The later rounds didn't feature any steals. Grade: B-"
via Steelers.com
He awarded 7 A grades in his draft evaluations. The Arizona Cardinals, Baltimore Ravens, Detroit Lions, Kansas City Chiefs, Seattle Seahawks, Tennessee Titans and inexplicably the Cleveland Browns. All in all, he declared 15 teams had better draft grades than the Pittsburgh Steelers including teams like the Dallas Cowboys and Miami Dolphins. As a long time Steelers fan, you learn to live with a certain amount of disrespect towards the Black and Gold in the national press.
Steelers 2022 NFL Draft Class: The First Look Grades Are In
Admittedly, Steeler Nation is vocal and rubs certain fanbases the wrong way and that can lead to interesting evaluations like when T.J. Watt ties the NFL record for sacks and wins Defensive Player of the Year, but ranks 20th overall in the Pro Football Focus Top 101 Players in the NFL. Several edge rushers were ranked ahead of him which makes me wonder who exactly watches game film at that website?
(Photo by Justin Berl/Getty Images)
That said, I agree that teams like Baltimore, Detroit and Tennessee had outstanding drafts. I also think teams like the New York Jets deserved A grades for their draft efforts, but I am utterly mystified by some of the logic applied to these evaluations. I also cannot for the life of me understand how a team that drafts a kicker in the 4th round gets an A grade. I can understand Baltimore that had 6 4th round picks and only 1 other pick the rest of the draft, taking a punter with their insane amount of 4th rounders, but Cleveland drafted the only placekicker in the draft and Cade York, a fine player by the way, received a D+ grade for the selection. The Browns did not have a pick until the 3rd round of the draft and after selecting 9 players, the only of which received an individual A grade were 2 7th round picks somehow received an A- from Trapasso.
Now as a bit of a math geek and using my admittedly ancient history from high school grades, if Cleveland had 9 picks that add up to 27, that is a 3.0 average which is a B average. The Steelers had 7 picks that added up to 21 which is also 3.0. The Steelers A grades were in the 1st, 2nd and 4th and lowest grade was a C- and the Browns only had 2 A grades in the 7th and a D+ in the 4th. At the very least, those grades should be equal, but using the Myles Garrett Pythagorean Theorem that too many sportswriters use to compare Garrett to more productive players somehow, those identical averages are 2 different grades.
Chris Trapasso is entitled to his opinion, but if you are going to assign letter grades to individual players which translates to mathematical numbers, you should be consistent. Virtually all high school graduates know how to compute a GPA and I have every faith that Mr. Trapasso has this skill. Which means that he disregarded his own evaluations of individual player grades when assigning his overall grade.
What do you think, Steeler Nation? Did we get a fair shake from CBSSports.com with these grades? Please comment below or follow me on Twitter @thebubbasq.
