After spending three months putting together the roster for the Pittsburgh Steelers, general manager Omar Khan likes how his work has played out.
That doesn’t mean, though, he is willing to rule out the possibility he will continue to tweak now that training camp has opened.
“I’ll be honest with you,” Khan said on reporting day to Saint Vincent. “We made a lot of moves this year, and I feel really good about where our team is right now. So, to say that we’re out there trying to find someone, that’s not the case. If an opportunity comes available, you know, we’ll look at it, but I feel really good about our team.”
After a busy offseason of signings and trades, the Steelers by appearances remain thin at wide receiver and safety. Safety could more plausibly be addressed internally via moving cornerbacks or even inside linebackers into safety-like roles, but the WR depth chart that drops off after DK Metcalf is — from the outside — viewed as a more urgent need.
Khan, though, insists he feels “really good” about the position.
“We traded for DK, and he is going to be an impact player for us,” Khan said. “But I (also) saw how the growth in Calvin Austin last year, and that was really cool to see. Watching Roman Wilson this offseason has been really great to see his progress and where he’s at. I think we would have seen some of it towards the end of last year if he would have had the opportunity to play. We acquired Robert Woods, a veteran leader in that room. So feel really good about that position.”
Austin is entering his fourth pro season but has mostly been a WR3 or WR4 while playing in 2023 and 2024. Woods is a former Pro Bowl honoree but at 32 last season had only 20 catches for the Houston Texans. Wilson was a third-round pick last year who played only five snaps all season, in part because of injury.
It is Wilson with whom the Steelers seems most optimistic about. Consider that coach Mike Tomlin brought him up unsolicited during his camp-opening news conference Wednesday.
“This a big camp for Roman Wilson,” Tomlin said. “I know he played little, if any, last year but the expectations of a second-year player are the same. He showed up highly conditioned, and he’s had a really good offseason.
“And so I don’t know that I come in with any level of anticipation of who specifically is going to do what in regards to (pass-catching depth after Metcalf), but more about just rolling that ball out and beginning this process and see who has evolved or who is evolving.”
