Kovacevic: Still can't count out corner, not after Foxborough

Brief and to the Point ...

• This was supposed to be the year where, finally, we could stop beseeching the Steelers to target a corner.

But honestly, I'm not certain that should be the case when the 30th overall turn comes Thursday night in the NFL Draft.

Sure, it'd be wonderful if Kevin Colbert and Mike Tomlin landed some otherworldly edge rusher. You'd have real-time support for James Harrison. A young bookend for Bud Dupree. An additional bite to a defense that only began to rediscover its teeth last season.

And then, upon thinking of it further, Foxborough pops to mind. Dupree had the Steelers' only defensive splash play. Harrison was insanely dropped into pass coverage. And what truly lost that game, in addition to the indefensibly meek schematic posture deployed by Tomlin and Keith Butler, was that they still didn't have enough speed, skill and smarts in the secondary to stop anything Bill Belichick and Tom Brady tried.



The NFL is a passing league, more than ever, and that applies all the more with each passing round of playoffs. That's where Brady awaits, and Matt Ryan and Aaron Rodgers, and all those guys. That's no accident. At some pivotal point, one of the truly elite quarterbacks will be there ready to rip you apart.

Again, yes, an edge rusher can be huge in that equation, especially if the coordinator bothers to use him as such. But show me a defense that's sound in the secondary, and I'll show you a defense that's mostly immune. Because that kind of secondary will make actual plays on the football, not just scatter around with animated question marks floating about their heads.

Let's be blunt here: Willie Gay couldn't keep up as slot corner, the Patriots knew it, and they exploited that at every turn.

I'm not going to advocate a slot corner in the first round. That's not maximizing the best-available-athlete creed. But an athletic, intelligent, high-ceiling corner of some kind makes all kinds of sense. Bookend him with Artie Burns, ultimately, and work in there Senquez Golson, a natural in the slot. Both are playmakers. Get the most of Ross Cockrell, especially in big-man matchups, but groom the new guy to be the guy. And from there, strike a little fear into opposing quarterbacks when they release the ball.

It just might be that the missing variable isn't the most obvious.

In the Steelers' annual pre-draft press conference Monday, Colbert described the team as seeing "good numbers in the secondary." That's generally meaningful praise from the GM. He then cited "good numbers for pass rushers."

They'll take a pass rusher. You know it. I know it.

• Or they'll take a quarterback.

Really, I don't know how many more hints they need to drop that they're serious about finding ... not Ben Roethlisberger's backup but his successor. But in case anyone's Landry Jones-ing for more, this came from Colbert's lips Monday when asked by our Mark Kaboly about the Steelers' internal approach to grading/selecting in the first round: "You're going to have your board set the way the players are graded. But that's not how you'll pick 'em. ... You get to a quarterback and a corner, in our scenario, you're probably going to take a corner over a quarterback as long as they're close. If the quarterback is significantly better than the corner, then we may be kicking ourselves if we didn't take the quarterback."

OK, Alex, I'll take Things You've Never Heard The Steelers Brass Say In Previous Years for $200.

Asked directly if he'd like to add a quarterback in this draft, Colbert came back, "I think we're always open to putting a quarterback in the mix. Because it's the most critical position in our game. If you don't have a quarterback, then you're probably going to leave your team short at some point."

He paused, presumably envisioning Landry trotting onto the field for a fourth quarter drive in the Super Bowl.

"Again, at what cost?" he continued. "We have a great quarterback. We think he's going to be here for a while. At least we hope that. But you know, we've got to be prepared."

Finally, there was this: "You have to make sure you have that position secure for the long term. The great franchises that have sustained it have done it because they went from Joe Montana to Steve Young, from Brett Favre to Aaron Rodgers. You don't have to have that lull. Because if you do, you're probably not going to win a lot of games."

Yeah, they're taking a quarterback. For sure.

• Wonderfully candid assessment from Tomlin of his own role in studying video for draft prep: "From an evaluation standpoint, I try not to speculate too much. I try to look at tape at what they do well or don't do well, and not try to forecast and be cute and creative from that perspective."

Makes me envision a door at Steelers HQ with the bronzed nameplate: OFFICE OF CUTE AND CREATIVE SCOUTING

He also used the term "variant animals" at one point. I can't even recall the context.

The man is anything but cliched in his verbiage.

• Don't take the demotion of Conor Sheary to the third line even remotely seriously. If the Penguins are down a goal or especially two Thursday night, you'll see him back with Sidney Crosby and Jake Guentzel faster than Brooks Orpik's head will spin.

Also, there's nothing really wrong with Sheary's overall game that wouldn't be solved by his being a little less ... well, cute and creative. The latter element's acceptable, obviously, but his greatest shortcoming remains that his confidence goes too high when things are good. He thinks he's capable of stickhandling through traffic, which he seldom is, or that he can rifle a Phil Kessel-type rocket pass through traffic, which he seldom can.

If a little humility is found, he'll be fine in a hurry.

• If Chris Kunitz is in, Carter Rowney should be out. Once Carl Hagelin is in, Scott Wilson should be out. Nothing to overthink here.

• The toll the Maple Leafs likely took on the Capitals in the first round can't be overstated. In addition to having key players hurt or banged up, notably Alexander Ovechkin, Washington's defensemen had to spend six games -- with five of those going to overtime -- spinning around, backpedaling and glancing over there shoulders at Toronto's younger, faster forwards. That won't be wiped away with just a couple days off.

And don't dare compare the caliber of Toronto's forwards with Pittsburgh's. The Canadian hype machine went into warp drive there for a while, but they aren't close.

• The Penguins can't talk about this, but I sure can: Of the NHL's top five teams in the regular season, only the No. 1 Capitals and No. 2 Penguins remain. The No. 3 Blackhawks, No. 4 Blue Jackets and No. 5 Wild are all wiped away. And those three teams won two total games in the first round.

What's more, the winner of Penguins-Capitals gets to face either the Senators or Rangers next.

Has it ever been clearer, at least in recent NHL history, that the Cup will be stamped in the second round?

• It won't help Washington, of course, that they'll also be without Evgeny Kuznetsov. As they are in every playoff game.

Hear players and even coaches around the league talk, and they'll tell you he's the new king of disappearing in games that matter, healthy or otherwise. Even more than his meager playoff numbers -- seven goals, five assists in 32 games -- might suggest. He's a headache and a half internally, we've long been told.

• That said, there aren't enough playoff superlatives for T.J. Oshie and Justin Williams, not just in production but also in personality. There's a reason the exasperated Capitals pursued and acquired both, and that's it.

• Tom Wilson will make everyone forget Brandon Dubinsky in a hurry. He's not for show. He'll do real damage.

• Since the NHL is responsible for this playoff format that pits the top teams against each other in the second round, here's hoping the league will also be responsible for assigning its very best officials to the series. Which means no Wes McCauley.

• Here's hoping, too, that Mike Sullivan sees fit to cutting off power-play passing lanes to Ovechkin, rather than asking his players to drop to block that shot. Stopping one shot, even Ovi's, isn't worth the loss of a significant penalty-killer. Let Marc-Andre Fleury make the save, and live to play another day.

• "We get the angst. We get the concern."

That was from Neal Huntington speaking with reporters Sunday about the Pirates losing Starling Marte for half the season. Specifically, he was referring to the public's reaction to the team not having an important player.

They get the angst. They get the concern.

My God, they talk like that all the time. It's as if the fans being emotionally invested, even to a fault, is some kind of crutch management has to bear.

• The Pirates' farm system that draws relentlessly unjustified raves from around the baseball world currently has no one to help the affiliate based in Pittsburgh in a time of dire need.

Class AAA Indianapolis is currently 5-12 and last in the International League's West Division. Which wouldn't matter much if individual excellence were happening, but it isn't.

The Indians' cumulative .218/.279/.351 slash line is rock bottom in the league. Among the prospects on the roster, Austin Meadows is batting .200/.269/.283, Max Moroff is at .203/.299/.525, Gift Ngeoepe is at .241/.308/.379. The only guys hitting well are a couple of Dave Littlefield-esque roster-fillers in Chris Bostick and Jason Rogers.

The pitching staff, with a 3.68 ERA that ranks eighth of the 14 teams, might be even more ominous in the prospect regard: Steven Brault, the pitch-to-contact lefty, has continued to look like a younger Jeff Locke with 17 hits and nine walks in 21 innings. And Drew Hutchison ... well, it's a family-friendly site. Go look for yourself.

Meadows is a real player. He'll be fine. The rest aren't and won't. And this is what there is to show for this management team having a decade in charge.

The discussions and debates on this tend to be circular, but here's the bottom line: Teams acquire and develop amateur talent with a singular goal in mind, and that's to benefit the big-league team. These guys have been great a kowtowing to baseball publications and boosting their own rankings. They've achieved comparatively nothing toward the actual goal.

• Maybe the Steelers should take a third baseman.

• Not in the mood for jokes?

That's OK. I get the angst. I get the concern.