Grading the trade: Steelers just ripped off the Dallas Cowboys when you see what they received in return for Broderick Jones
The Pittsburgh Steelers have moved on from 2023 first-round pick Broderick Jones, but when you see what they received in return, it might be hard to believe that the Cowboys really offered them as much.
The Pittsburgh Steelers just traded Broderick Jones, and they didn’t get a bag of peanuts. They got a third-round pick.
Jones was on his way out of Pittsburgh one way or another. Was he a cut candidate this year? Probably not, but the writing was on the wall. He was going to live out his rookie contract at most, hit the door, and the Steelers were going to move on from what, in all honesty, was a botched first-round pick in the 2023 NFL Draft.
Broderick Jones facts
- Played college at Georgia
- Steelers traded up to select him in Round 1 of the 2023 NFL Draft.
- Steelers declined his 5th-year option.
Omar Khan flipped a disaster into draft capital
For all the criticism Omar Khan has received for the Broderick Jones selection, the Steelers general manager just pulled off something remarkable. To take a tackle who was unplayable because of his medicals and everything Pittsburgh saw in the preseason, and flip that player into a third- and sixth-round pick while only giving up Jones and a fourth, that is tremendous value.
I’m still having trouble wrapping my brain around it. We had to check two to three times from multiple outlets to make sure it was true that the Steelers are receiving a third-round pick in exchange for Jones. Not only a third, but a sixth as well.
If I’m going to be completely honest, blindly, if you had told me the Steelers were going to trade Broderick Jones, I would have said somewhere between a fifth- and seventh-round pick in the 2028 NFL Draft. So the fact that Pittsburgh just flipped Jones for a third-round pick leaves me genuinely speechless. I have no idea how Khan did it.
What are the Cowboys doing?
I’m not exactly sure what Dallas is thinking here. Maybe the Cowboys felt generous. They said, hey, we just got one of the best wide receivers in the league last year and only gave up a third, so we’ll take Broderick off your hands and give you a third in return. The logic escapes me, but Pittsburgh isn’t going to complain about the return.
Final Grade
This is an A+++ trade for Omar Khan and the Steelers. A 4.5 on the GPA scale. Jones’s tenure in Pittsburgh was a mess from start to finish. Beyond all the on-field struggles, the injury situation, what we saw in preseason, the shuffle from right tackle to left tackle and back again, it never came together. It was a botched pick from year one, and now it is officially over.
The Steelers gain a third- and sixth-round pick in exchange for Jones and a fourth. For a player who carried almost no trade value on paper, Khan turned a sunk cost into legitimate draft ammunition — and Pittsburgh will take that every time.
