PITTSBURGH — Remember the perils-of-free-agency talk from Mike Tomlin after Melvin Ingram quit?
The moral of Tomlin's story seemed to be based in ancient Steelers philosophy.
You can't just throw money at your problems. Other teams do that. We don't. We know better.
That was before this week, when the Steelers started spending like Kardashians.
"It just didn't work out the way we envisioned, the way (Ingram) envisioned, and sometimes that happens in free agency," Tomlin said at the time. "That's really, culturally, why we build our team primarily through the draft. ... Free agency makes it more cumbersome at times to get to know (players) on a lot of levels as you're preparing to play games."
Yes, well, give me cumbersome. Cumbersome can win you a Super Bowl. Free agents Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski, Leonard Fournette, Ndamukong Suh, Shaq Barrett and even Antonio Brown sure seemed to help the Bucs two years ago.
The Super Bowl-champion Los Angeles Rams reeled in some pretty important players from the outside, too, albeit more by trade than free agency. Do you think Matthew Stafford, Jalen Ramsey, Odell Beckham Jr., Von Miller and Leonard Floyd helped?
I'm sure Tomlin also noted that the AFC North-champion Cincinnati Bengals went the cumbersome route to build a solid defense. Five of their 11 defensive starters — including Mike Hilton — arrived via free agency.
The draft still has to be your lifeblood, but if you can't incorporate tons of outside players in a hurry these days, you're playing from behind. And it's not like the Steelers haven't done some of that. Joe Haden, Joe Schobert, Tyson Alualu, Minkah Fitzpatrick, Ahkello Witherspoon — all those guys were somewhere else before they got here.
You also might remember free agents such as James Farrior, Ryan Clark and Jeff Hartings helping the Steelers win games.
But this was different. The Steelers came into a little money, a little cap space — they got a hold of mom's credit card is what they did — and went nuts, laying out $80.45 million in three days. None of the signings shook the NFL landscape, but $80 million is $80 million.
This is what other teams do. Steelers backers laugh at teams for doing this. The Steelers don't win the offseason. They don't even try to win the offseason.
Of course, it's easy to rail against the dangers of spending when you don't have money. Combine mega cap space with major talent issues, and suddenly a free agent binge doesn't seem like such a bad idea.
Good for the Steelers, I say. They're having a terrific offseason, and it started with bringing in Brian Flores. New blood and new brains are a good thing, especially for a franchise that tends to stay insular. Flores is the kind of person any organization would want. He can walk into any room in the building and make everybody smarter.
It'll be fun to see how Flores, Teryl Austin and Tomlin deploy Myles Jack in a defense that already features T.J. Watt, Cam Heyward and Fitzpatrick. It'd be nice to see them draft a big body up front for that unit, too.
Change can be difficult, but, for better or worse, these are not your same old Steelers. They went way out of their comfort zone to acquire Fitzpatrick, trading a first-round pick for the first time in 50-some years. They aggressively moved into the top 10 to draft Devin Bush. They broke with tradition to give Watt fully guaranteed money beyond the first year of his deal (and make him the highest-paid defensive player in the game).
Next thing you know, they'll actually negotiate a contract in-season.
Who knows how it all shakes out, especially with perhaps the fourth-best quarterback in the division.
But you can't say they aren't trying.
