Steelers

Kovacevic: All else must be secondary

Jan 19, 2016 • 12:02 am

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DENVER -- Art Rooney II soon will sit with Mike Tomlin, Kevin Colbert and the rest of the Steelers' brass to plot the coming spring and summer. And this might or might not be a five-point outline for that meeting that I might or might not slip under the chairman's door:

5. Stop burning cash on Maurkice Pouncey and give it instead to Ramon Foster, who never misses a snap, and David DeCastro, who might have been the roster's most improved player. Foster can be a free agent. DeCastro needs to be wrapped up. Take care of the guards.

4. Keep the kicker. Cut the punter.

3. Reopen talks with Antonio Brown that would keep him in Pittsburgh for life. He did exactly as he was asked after he unwisely piped up last summer about a renegotiation. He showed up, he shut up and he was sensational. Two years are left on that deal. He's underpaid, regardless of who agreed to what. He never should see a snap in another uniform.

2. Prepare for life beyond James Harrison. But not Heath Miller. And not William Gay. With all appropriate respect to Harrison's football accomplishments, it's just not healthy to enter an NFL season with a roster spot fully committed to a 37-year-old outside linebacker.

1. All the cornerbacks. All the safeties. By all that is holy, consider them all. Via all forms of acquisition. And don't come back to this office, gentlemen, until you're convinced it's the best secondary Pittsburgh will have seen in two decades.

• Tomlin is the coach. Deal with it.

He'll be the coach for as long as he'd like, and what the Steelers achieved this season in the face of a beyond-belief portion of their offense lost for various reasons, that only cemented the already obvious.

Obviously.

• Brandon Boykin told our Jason Mackey after the loss Sunday that he'd love to return, even though Tomlin, Keith Butler and Carnell Lake all but buried him for three-quarters of the season. One five-minute chat with his agent ought to cure that.

• Process this: DeAngelo Williams, signed through 2016, will be a backup next season. So will Jesse James. And Sammie Coates. Seriously, these guys might not get on the field. This offense could be terrifying.

• There were a lot of officiating calls I didn't like Sunday, and in both directions. But I have no trouble with the NFL's broader policy of not reviewing whether or not a quarterback willingly gave himself up, as Peyton Manning appeared to do on the Broncos' winning drive. What nonsense it would be to have a group of people huddled around a replay monitor trying to mind-read.

• This is easy for anyone other than Mike McCarthy to say, but the Packers needed to go for two. When the football gods smile upon you as they did upon Green Bay in that astonishing final-second touchdown pass by Aaron Rodgers, you don't hand the gift back. You don't let the other team catch its breath. You bury them.

The players could have lived with that, I'll bet.

In the 1986 WPIAL championship between North Hills and Gateway at Three Rivers Stadium, a clash some still call the greatest high school football game our region has seen, the Gators won, 7-6, because North Hills and Jack McCurry, not wanting a repeat of the previous season's tie and co-championship with Gateway, went for two after a late touchdown. The Gators' Todd Washington intercepted, and that was that.

Full disclosure: I went to Gateway and knew many of the individuals on the winning side.

Fuller disclosure: Everyone I've ever heard discussing the game thinks not a tiny bit less of that North Hills team or McCurry for how that unfolded.

• I still think Chris Boswell splits the uprights if given a shot. If only because he's provided no one cause to feel otherwise.

• Wait, it's possible to try to win a playoff game with class and without intentionally injuring people?

Congratulations to the top-seeded Broncos on a worthy AFC Championship Game berth.

• The Patriots will beat them by about 50.

• It's one thing for the Bengals to be idiots a week after that no longer can actually damage their cause. It's quite another thing for the NFL's official Twitter account to giddily share such idiocy at the expense of another of its 32 member franchises.