Free Agency:
Unfortunately Ernie Stautner has retired :-( .. We wait for the draft to fill most our needs. Still we target the following three players:
LG Jerry Hutch - Signed
RT Dick Klein - Signs with ATL
NT Bill Hudson - Signed
Draft:
Coming into the draft we have the following needs QB, TE, C, DE, ILB, OLB, CB, SS
At the top of the board stands QB Fran Tarkenton. We have the 25th pick of the draft.
It seems that Tackles and Secondary is where the depth is in this draft class!
At 25th we sit with the following options:
RB Keith Lincoln
TE Mike Ditka
G Al Bemiller
While we do not have a need at Keith Lincoln is making it hard on us. He looks solid, but we already have a decent running back. John Henry Johnson is aging though. Keith Lincoln could be the next great thing! Mike Ditka looks solid as well with nice combines and nice bars. We have currently no TE's on our roster. Intriguing that he played college ball in Pittsburgh as well. Al Bemiller is a Pennsylvania native and could guard our line for years to come. Yet again a man with good bars complemented by some nice combine numbers.
We sort out Bemiller as we're currently set on Guards. That leaves two.
We end up going with RB Lincoln. We decide we can find value at TE in the lower rounds. Bemiller goes 27th and Ditka at 44th. We considered trading up but we is on target to land one of our targets in the second round so we decide not to.
As the 2nd round comes around we once again has 3 targets:
MLB Mike Lucci
CB Claude Gibson
S Dainard Paulson
This time we're in no doubt. With the 57th selection the Steelers select Pennsylvania native MLB Mike Lucci.
The rest of the draft goes like this:
3rd - Wally Feagin, OLB
4th - Alvin Hall, CB
5th - Jim Kerr, FS
6th - Leo Reed, TE
7th - Bob Voight, DT