Let's pick the category everyone here likes best:
1. Worilds underperforms and helps contribute to an underachieving season (can't get to the QB). Worilds is DRASTICALLY overpaid, wasting cap space that could have been rolled over into any future season. Steelers let him walk thus validating Worilds as a poor draft choice and yet another wasted opportunity to make the team younger. The team has to use another resource to invest in that position (after Woodley and Worilds in the Tomlin era).
2. Worilds overperforms and helps contribute to an overachieving season. The team franchise tags him. The resultant contract is top-10 at his position, possibly $25-30 million in guarantees ON TOP of the almost $10 million guaranteed him now. The Steelers have some negotiating power but are now dealing with a legit top-10 talent and pretty much will have to pay top dollar around the franchise tag or risk losing a real asset.
3. Worilds is average. He is overpaid for THIS season already. We are now in a rock-and-hard spot. Do we franchise tag him AGAIN ($12 million), over-inflate what we WANT to pay him AGAIN and put ourselves in a bad spot at the negotiating table. With little to no depth at the position, there really isn't a win-win anywhere.
Those are your three choices Steelers Nation and the only three available to the Steelers once they decide to transition tag him in spring and so quick shed themselves of Woodley. I'm sorry if I think Colbert and Company brought on a situation that has very few good choices for the Steelers moving forward, in fact all of them are pretty poor in my opinion.
This is what i was getting at in the Jarvis thread. When players don't develop until their last year under contract, you are in a tough spot, especially if that guy is a 1st rounder because you already paid him significant money for little return.
Just imagine of Worilds 2013 season happened 2 years ago. Last year Worilds was simply good but nothing special. Still for the first time he showed maybe he will become something. If that happened 2 years ago, then they likely would have signed him long term and felt comfortable with him starting opposite Woodley.
That means they probably wouldn't have drafted Jarvis last year and right now they would have big money Woodley and reasonably priced Worilds. They probably would have drafted pass rushers in later rounds as backups.
WHat they have right now is two question marks at OLB. Worilds has proven to me that he can be Clark Haggans. I'm concerned that Clark Haggans is Jarvis's ceiling. It is a pretty bad situation if you invest a 1st round pick and a franchise tag and get 2 Clark Haggans level pass rushers.
Contrast this with what happened at WR. They drafted Wallace and Brown. By year 2, the steelers knew all they needed to know about both players and look at how that helped them make good decisions. They wrapped Brown up quickly and now he's a bargain. They also knew Wallace really was a 1 trick pony and they correctly let him walk instead of matching big money to keep him.
If Brown has not developed quickly, then the Steelers probably would have been forced to keep Wallace at that crazy contract Miami gave him.
The point is, you need to know what you have in these players by their 3rd year at the latest. If a guy stinks, it's not the end of the world so long as you know immediately so you can move on.
One of the things i'm excited about is the steelers seem to have realized this and they are trying to draft more immediate impact players instead of project players.
WHen the Steelers were strongest, young guys like Porter did have to wait to play because there was a strong starter in front of them. That's a big difference from now when guys are sitting or playing early and stinking it up because they are not ready to play.
Projects are for later rounds, not for top picks.
