Once again, general manager Kevin Colbert and the Pittsburgh Steelers continue to treat their draft acquisitions as ‘house money’, and feel free to use it in a much looser fashion than they ever do their natural draft picks.
So far this offseason, the Steelers gained third- and fifth-round picks for trading Antonio Brown, a sixth-round pick for trading Marcus Gilbert, a sixth-round pick for trading Jerald Hawkins, and a fifth-round pick for trading Joshua Dobbs.
The picks from the first two trades were for 2019, and they utilized those picks, but the third-round pick retrieved for Brown both emboldened and enabled them to make the move up for Devin Bush in the first round, as they gave up their second-round pick and a 2020 third-round pick, the latter of which they expect to replace in the form of a compensatory pick for Le’Veon Bell.