Burnett being slowed by injuries is no surprise

[AtlantaDan]

Looks like another botched free agent signing

Morgan Burnett has been slowed by injuries. The Steelers shouldn't be surprised.

Burnett did not practice Tuesday or Wednesday of this off week. The players don’t return to work until Monday. Burnett did some drills with team trainer John Norwig Wednesday, but he said there is no timetable for his return from a groin injury that has kept him out since Week 3. When he was asked Wednesday if a procedure would be required to repair his groin, he said: “I just take it day by day. I don’t know what’s in the future for me.”...

Burnett missed most of training camp with a hamstring injury. He returned to the lineup in time to play in the first two games, but the groin injury suffered against Kansas City in Week 2 has kept him out of the lineup since.

Burnett’s high injury rate should not come as a surprise to the Steelers — not if they did their homework before they signed him to a three-year, $14.3 million contract. Burnett’s has a long injury history, and he’s had a particularly tough time dealing with groin and hamstring injuries.

This is the fourth consecutive year Burnett has missed games due to soft tissue injuries and the third consecutive season he has missed games due to a groin injury.

A troubling pattern has surfaced the past two years when a hamstring injury has been followed quickly by a groin injury.

http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/s...s/201810170129

Same failure to perform due diligence, or simply wish that an injury would not recur, that occurred with Ladarius Green.

Combine that with the Steelers repeated failures in drafting or signing in free agency defensive backs and no surprise Burnett is not seeing the field.

[Mojouw]

Uhhhh. This is why so many Steelers fans are just "sky is falling" doom and gloom types. The entire print and radio Steelers local media is just so darn negative all the time. It is literally a drumbeat of awful around things that are not as bad as they are made out to be.

Green is a story of a few small mistakes on the team's part and lies on the player's part biting everyone in the butt. But nowhere does the article mention two key facts. One, the team decided not to make an offer to Weddle. He was expecting one and it didn't come. They had the money or the chance to make the money needed to offer both guys and chose not to. It isn't a thing where signing Green precluded them from signing Weddle. Second, if he could've stayed healthy - Green would have been a destroyer of worlds in this offense. I'm talking Gronk or Kelce good. Like the kinda good where we don't care that Jordan Berry can't punt because we all forget he is on the team. For the relatively small amount of cap space that it cost to bring Green in, I would roll those dice every time. Additionally, Green was ready to play (if his noggin would've held up) NOW and a comparable TE talent would've required a first round draft pick and 1-2 years of development.

Finally, signing guys like Green and Burnett is what SB caliber teams that are searching for the missing elements have to do. Both guys signed up for less than expected deals. Burnett took about 1/3 of what everyone expected. And, if he was healthy, Burnett is ready to play at a high level right now. We see what rookies like Edmunds and Bates (the safety most wanted drafted in Steeltown that took multiple terrible angles last week) struggle with in adjusting to a ton of playing time right away. So this article essentially says that the team is to be significantly critiqued for handing out team friendly contracts to highly capable veteran players with health risks. If their health would or does hold up - those players would be massive upgrades over the current roster or any draft pick for at least 1-2 seasons. Isn't that consistent with the "win now" message the same Pittsburgh media also sends?

For me, the real damning critique would be if the team had no other plans. But in both situations, they did roster players as an insurance policy against the health of their FA signings. Unlike ILB....

[AtlantaDan]

Green is a story of a few small mistakes on the team's part and lies on the player's part biting everyone in the butt.

This just in - players and their agents minimize their injury history during contract negotiations. That is why the team does due diligence - the Steelers allegedly failed to do it with Green.

Not only did the Steelers sign him after Green had ankle surgery in January 2016, a source told the Post-Gazette that they never fully investigated his history of concussions with the Chargers.

http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/s...s/201705180204

If true that is more than a small mistake. It is gross negligence.

When a team appears to have engaged in little more than wishful thinking with regard to the injury history of a recent free agent signing that is in the running for the worst in Steelers history, it is fair game to note the same issue may be recurring with Burnett. Packers, in no danger of being confused this year with the 85 Bears on defense, made no serious effort to keep him even after his asking price collapsed.

[Mojouw]

This just in - players and their agents minimize their injury history during contract negotiations. That is why the team does due diligence - the Steelers allegedly failed to do it with Green.

Not only did the Steelers sign him after Green had ankle surgery in January 2016, a source told the Post-Gazette that they never fully investigated his history of concussions with the Chargers.

http://www.post-gazette.com/sports/s...s/201705180204

If true that is more than a small mistake. It is gross negligence.

When a team appears to have engaged in little more than wishful thinking with regard to the injury history of a recent free agent signing that is in the running for the worst in Steelers history, it is fair game to note the same issue may be recurring with Burnett. Packers, in no danger of being confused this year with the 85 Bears on defense, made no serious effort to keep him even after his asking price collapsed.

I've never been troubled by the Green signing and fallout. I think it was a roll of the dice and everyone knew it but was too polite to talk about it. And it didn't prevent them from making other moves - that lack of other moves was a choice.

Burnett is Mike Mitchell. Everything you said about Burnett and the Packers could be said about Mitchell. The Pack wanted to get younger in the secondary and felt that they had a few young recent draft picks ready to step up and play alongside Ha-Ha. The Steelers swapped out Mitchell for a young recent draft pick at FS and then signed a version of Mitchell that projected better into their revised vision of SS. One could argue that Burnett projected BEST of the available safeties on the market for the role as the Steelers defined it. Well, other than Reid -- but that is a whole other ball of wax.

The point is that we can debate these signings all darn day. And the article chose to define everything as a negative and then forge linkages between things without taking anything besides playing time into account. I reject that analysis and argue that cost and reward needs to be factored in. When you are a team with SB aspirations who spends to the cap (and beyond) every single year, you need to take risks in order to get better quickly. Green, Burnett, Wilcox, McDonald, Haden, and others were calculated risks on veterans who were available for a reason (if they didn't have severe question marks they wouldn't be on the market!) but also represent a rapid way to improve your roster. Sure, it involves a serious roll of the dice that they stay healthy or whatnot, but what are the other options? I'm a great believer in draft and develop - but that isn't a surefire route either.

You miss a 100% of the shots you don't take. So what's wrong with taking team friendly shots? Isn't like the contracts of Burnett and Green burdened the team for years. Neither prevented the team from adding other pieces. And with both the potential payout was massive.

Just frustrating that the original article only address how this was all some sort of negligence on the Steelers part. I see very little evidence of that. I see a team that gambled on guys returning to health and potentially filling a void on the roster. What's the harm in that? It is certainly better than sitting back and only drafting your 7 guys and counting on each of them to make a significant positive contribution right away.

[bendsteel]

I've never been troubled by the Green signing and fallout. I think it was a roll of the dice and everyone knew it but was too polite to talk about it. And it didn't prevent them from making other moves - that lack of other moves was a choice.

Burnett is Mike Mitchell. Everything you said about Burnett and the Packers could be said about Mitchell. The Pack wanted to get younger in the secondary and felt that they had a few young recent draft picks ready to step up and play alongside Ha-Ha. The Steelers swapped out Mitchell for a young recent draft pick at FS and then signed a version of Mitchell that projected better into their revised vision of SS. One could argue that Burnett projected BEST of the available safeties on the market for the role as the Steelers defined it. Well, other than Reid -- but that is a whole other ball of wax.

The point is that we can debate these signings all darn day. And the article chose to define everything as a negative and then forge linkages between things without taking anything besides playing time into account. I reject that analysis and argue that cost and reward needs to be factored in. When you are a team with SB aspirations who spends to the cap (and beyond) every single year, you need to take risks in order to get better quickly. Green, Burnett, Wilcox, McDonald, Haden, and others were calculated risks on veterans who were available for a reason (if they didn't have severe question marks they wouldn't be on the market!) but also represent a rapid way to improve your roster. Sure, it involves a serious roll of the dice that they stay healthy or whatnot, but what are the other options? I'm a great believer in draft and develop - but that isn't a surefire route either.

You miss a 100% of the shots you don't take. So what's wrong with taking team friendly shots? Isn't like the contracts of Burnett and Green burdened the team for years. Neither prevented the team from adding other pieces. And with both the potential payout was massive.

Just frustrating that the original article only address how this was all some sort of negligence on the Steelers part. I see very little evidence of that. I see a team that gambled on guys returning to health and potentially filling a void on the roster. What's the harm in that? It is certainly better than sitting back and only drafting your 7 guys and counting on each of them to make a significant positive contribution right away.

Could not have said it better! Unfortunately, Colbert and Tomlin are not blessed with 20/20 hindsight like so many on discussion boards.

[AtlantaDan]

Could not have said it better! Unfortunately, Colbert and Tomlin are not blessed with 20/20 hindsight like so many on discussion boards.

Simply blessed with seven figure salaries to get it right.

Steelers organization has strengths (best in the business at drafting wide receivers and best OL coach in the game) but their evaluation of DBs, be it through drafting, trades, or FA signings has been abysmal in recent years.

Steelers have fairly docile local media coverage compared to many other cities so getting criticized for another personnel move that has issues in the multi year struggle to fix the secondary seems fair rather than a symptom of chronic negativity by hostile sportswriters

[Mojouw]

Simply blessed with seven figure salaries to get it right.

Steelers organization has strengths (best in the business at drafting wide receivers and best OL coach in the game) but their evaluation of DBs, be it through drafting, trades, or FA signings has been abysmal in recent years.

Steelers have fairly docile local media coverage compared to many other cities so getting criticized for another personnel move that has issues in the multi year struggle to fix the secondary seems fair rather than a symptom of chronic negativity by hostile sportswriters

The writers may indeed be docile. But they are assuredly uncomplicated in their analysis and demonstrate a strong tendency towards privileging the easy narrative over the complex analysis.

[AtlantaDan]

The writers may indeed be docile. But they are assuredly uncomplicated in their analysis and demonstrate a strong tendency towards privileging the easy narrative over the complex analysis.

You get what you pay for and fewer have paid for what is in most local newspapers for 20 years (the Post-Gazette’s paywall is an easy work around). Highly doubtful more nuanced analysis is going to jack up the P-G’s circulation and the Steelers certainly have no incentive to give reporters the access they had back in the day.

It is a dying industry that does not offer much in the way of a career path for young writers/reporters so no surprise what is being published

This is not an article about the Steelers but this interview with a talented 27 year old (I read it because I follow Duke basketball) who quit her job as a sportswriter to go to law school lays out why lousy pay, long hours, and covering teams that want to control their own media message is not likely to attract much in the way of bright new talent.

https://raleighco.com/media-circus/k...or-law-school/