Did Omar Khan Deserve New 3-Year Contract Extension From Steelers!?

Did Omar Khan Deserve New 3-Year Contract Extension From Steelers!?

The con artist strikes again. Omar stays cooking. The man gets what he wants. Never sleeps. Always on the grind because recently he put together another big signing himself. Omar Khan and the Steelers agreed to a three-year extension which keeps him as the GM with the squad throughout the 2028 season. From what I heard, how it all went down is Omar just walked into Rooney’s office, said, “I’m due for a contract extension. Here’s my deal.” You’re welcome. Almost like Kobe Bryant from the old Kobe system commercial days. You’re welcome.
Cuz if any GM in the NFL’s got that mama mentality, it is Omar Khan. The dude does not miss. The dude does not lose. Like literally what bad move has he made like these first three years and what he’s been able to accomplish as the Steelers GM is really impressive. Now we could talk about the end results of these teams year in year out and how they fully didn’t live up but is that on Omar Khan? a lot of other influences at play to how these teams perform on a season in season out basis like coaching, like schemes, like players getting injured. And then just the fact too, not every move is going to be you’re signing an allp pro and this guy’s on your roster for the next 10 years. Like, not every move is going to be like that. Not every move is going to work out perfectly. But I think we can say every time in the moment we’ve made a move, made a signing, made a trade, we’re like, “Yeah, this makes sense. This has a good chance of helping us now, improving our team, but then it also doesn’t screw up our cap for the future. We’re able to maintain flexibility for future years. And isn’t that what the GM is supposed to do for this roster?” Like, that’s the name of the game. try to win in the here and now as best you can unless you’re a team that is doing like a complete rebuild, but the Steelers don’t do that. So Omar Khan’s task here is try as best as possible to win in the here and now, but then also set your team up for future success as best as possible. And he has done that. We can complain about certain things with this team and the state of the franchise over the last few years, how it feels stale and this and that, right? That’s not on Omar. Like, how is that on Omar? Because the dude has been making shakeups and and making sure turnover is happening. The consistent theme through all these seasons has been Tomlin and we’ve talked about that at Nauseium. So, you know, some of the some of the things you could point out throughout the Omar Khan tenure that the Steelers have been lacking is like what’s going on with this quarterback situation. Uh the Kevin Dawson trade, not the biggest fan of that. We see he became basically a Pro Bowl guard, one of the best guards in the league out with the Rams. This wide receiver 2 situation over the last couple years. And then I guess maybe you could argue about the picking trade timing, but how many of those are on Omar Khan? Let’s not act like Tomlin doesn’t have power in how the personnel in this roster is constructed and things aren’t run by him on what he wants to do. Omar, he’s the one making the numbers work. He’s the one that’s got to worry about the value and the the future years and the flexib all that stuff. But like the QB situation and how we’ve handled the whole Kenny Mitch Mason thing to Russ and Fields, like I think that’s Tomlin. What Omar Khan’s got to worry about is okay, how how do we maneuver if this is if this is the direction we want to go in? if we want to pivot off of Kenny or if we want to bring in Russ and then Kenny’s unhappy and we I gotta trade Kenny and then we gotta bring in Fields like how do we navigate that and Omar I mean so if we want to break it down we bring in Russ on a vet minimum contract which wasn’t the hardest thing to do because of the whole Broncos situation he was always going to sign for that but we bring in Russ Kenny gets unhappy we flip Kenny for essentially Pton Wilson and Then we trade a sixth round pick for Justin Fields. And Fields is a productive player for us last year. Goes four and two. And then we move off of the two quarterbacks from last year that we basically gave up nothing to get. Like I said, sixrounder for Fields and a vet minimum contract for Russell Wilson. And we end up letting them walk. Russ gets, you know, the 10 million, could be up to 20 million with the Giants, which lands the Steelers a fifth round compensatory pick guaranteed. could be up to a third round compensatory pick. And then Justin Fields goes to the Jets and that is a third round compensatory pick. All the while we sign Aaron Rogers for less money than both of those guys, Fields and Russ. Like that is Omar Khan’s job. That is the con artist at work right there. That is a complete clinic on handling a tricky, delicate situation and making the best out of it over the course of a couple seasons. like unbelievable. And then with us having Aaron Rogers this year, like I’ve been saying, this gives us this gives us a chance, man. It gives us hope for this season to actually be Super Bowl contenders, all the while still we maintain flexibility for the future and the new era, 2026 and beyond. Don’t forget the Clayool trade. Drake Clay pull for a second round pick which ends up being essentially like the last first round pick in that class because the Dolphins had to forfeoot up their first rounder and it was yeah it was the number 32 overall pick we end up getting JPJ it feels like every draft over these last three years the grade at the end of it is an A+ and that’s not even coming from Steeler fans you could go to ESPN you Mel Kyper any of these draft analysts that are out there on the mainstream They they are giving Steelers like at least a minus, a A+ grades for all these Omar K drafts because we’re getting value every step along the way. Now, we still got to see some of these guys develop. Hell, last year’s draft class, Troy Fatano, our first round pick, didn’t even play. And same with Roman Wilson, our third round pick. But we got Zack Frasier, who’s going to be our center for the next decade, is going to be a perennial pro bowler, already one of the best centers in the league. in the second round. Second round. And then uh who else we get? Mason McCormack ended up being our starting guard last year in the fourth round. Like just value across the board. Any one of these rest we could talk about. Brick Jones ha hasn’t been the best thus far, but we got him in his rightful spot in the first round. Like that’s where he was projected to go. Got him there. Now we got to see what year three does. But JPJ was supposed to be a first round pick. Got him that 32nd overall pick. We were talking about drafting JPJ in that first round, right? Keanu Benton getting him in the second. That was good value. In the third in that draft, Darnell Washington. We also got Nick Herbig, absolute steal in the fourth. So, I mean, you could go through these classes and obviously this year, we said it was a slam dunk, A+. Derek Arman bolstered up the Dline. Uh, we got Will Howard in the six. Third round, Caleb Johnson. is going to be like our starting running back at least like is gonna do a 50-50 split with Jayla Moore. He was being talked about as being a second round running back like he’s going to be a stud. Jack Sawyer depth at at edge rusher round four could have been a third round pick. Ya Black round five Mel Kyper thought he was a third round pick. So like you look at all these draft classes man it’s like a A+ every time at the end of it. Now again, we still we got to see how they play out, but you can’t really fully grade them probably probably until at least like six, seven years down the line because even Omar Khin’s first draft, it’s like we’re still we’re still waiting to see what happens. Signing Patrick Queen under market value, signing a bunch of these like top name free agents under market value or at market value while maintaining flexibility for the future. every move makes sense at the time and we feel like we’re gonna improve. You could nitpick about certain things talking about the quarterback situation. Is that a noar con? I feel like that’s it’s more of a Tomman decision on how he wants the quarterback thing to go. You know, we drafted Kenny, moved off of Kenny. Ross feel I feel like that’s a Tomman thing. I don’t think that’s Omar Khan saying like, “Oh, let’s telling Mike Tomlin, let’s do this at quarterback.” No, I think it’s Mike Tomlin saying like, “Let’s go in this direction. and how can we make it work? And then Omar got to do his thing and I already broke down how we went from Kenny Russ and Fields to Rogers and then you know the draft pick compensatory stuff that is involved with it and the contracts and all that stuff and it was unreal what Omar Khan’s been able to pull off. Um, Kevin Dawson trade, not a fan of, but that was a Tomlin thing. That was, you know, Kevin Dawson was in Tomlin’s doghouse. We were playing Dawson out of position. We sign a couple guards and Dodson becomes expendable. Like, Omar really doesn’t have much leverage in that situation or I I feel have much say in that situation when you have Kevin Dawson finishing out his last year under contract who’s going to be a free agent and he’s not going to be playing for you. It’s like, yeah, we might as well get some value and we got a late round pick for him. Obviously, wasn’t a good move. Wasn’t a good But I don’t think that’s Omar Khan. That’s Mike Tomlin and coaching staff saying we’re done with Dawson. We want some other guards in here. He’s not good enough anymore and we’re playing him out of position. uh the wide receiver two situation. That’s that’s a little bit more on Omar Khan to get the deal done to make sure we get a receiver in here. And I would argue it didn’t really look like we needed a wide receiver too that bad last year when we’re humming at 10 and three and everyone’s thinking we’re like the top team in the AFC. I think it was more of Russ not playing as well down the stretch and us kind of going back to our old ways of being predictable with schemes and defense didn’t fully live up and yeah just it just wasn’t good. So right we could have had a better wide receiver too situation. You know the trade for Dante Jackson would have been better to just keep Deonte versus trading for Dante Jackson. Now Dante Jackson had a productive year for us. I guess I guess you could argue that. But if that’s if this is what we’re talking about is like an oversight from Omar. This this ain’t really I mean if anything like look how I played for the Niners last year and then he gets hurt with the ACL. Dodge the bullet there. If anything, weren’t we talking about potentially trading for Cooper Cup? He fell off down the stretch with the R. Like he got old quick. Like who was another guy that was out there? DeAndre Hopkins, I I remember complaining about Hopkins going to the Chiefs for a fifth round pick. He didn’t do jack for them. Devonte Adams was out there. He ends up going to the Jets for a third, but that was always happening, right? I don’t know if we were going to have enough sway or or have enough convincing to get Devonte Adams to the Steelers as opposed to him wanting to go to the Jets and play with Aaron Rogers. Unless we would have given up a second round pick, but then that wouldn’t have been worth it. So, like if anything, yeah, we could look at the wide receiver, wide receiver two situation over the last year, year and a half and say, you know what, maybe maybe it was the wisest thing to hold off on going all in for one of the big names. And even though the Mike Williams thing didn’t work out, like it it didn’t cost us as much, you know, only giving up a fifth round pick for him, it’s not like we forked up any big time draft picks and hurt any of these potential future draft classes for us. And then the picking trade timing, we got a third round pick for him. Again, I think it was addition through subtraction. Could we have done it before the draft? Maybe we were okay with Pickkins playing here and we were just trying to keep our leverage in the trade talks and saying like, “All right, if you don’t give us at least a third round pick, we’re just going to keep pickings.” And then eventually the Cowboys forked up that third round pick. Unfortunately, it was after the draft, though. So, we could, you know, we could talk about that. If we were always going to trade Pickkins, if that was the goal, then we should have traded him earlier before free agency or before the draft. At the same time, kind of made up for it with this John Newmith trade. He’s going to be our number two weapon on offense most likely. But then we also have Roman Wilson. We got Calvin. We got other pieces. Like I think this offense is going to be just fine now. Like I’m not as stressed about having extra weapon or a wide receiver too after the pickings trade because of what we just did with the Ramsay and John Smith move. What What has the man done wrong? like the I’m telling you uh I feel like Omar has made the best of tough situations year in year out rebuilding the roster damn well and proving it to where I feel like we’re we’re saying going into week one of these regular seasons we got a chance every move makes sense like we got a chance there’s hope I I’m I think we’re improved from last year and I I think this off seasonason was just another example of that. I think this off season was a masterclass given everything that was in front of us, how we ended the season, you know, the conversations around this Steelers franchise and where we were at and how we felt stale and, you know, we’re just spinning our tires. We’re doing the same old thing. Considering we were there and then the landscape that was ahead of us in free agency and the draft, the quarterback draft class, the quarterbacks that were available in free agency, the quarterbacks, the running back, like all that stuff, the the defensive linemen that were out there in free agency and in in the draft, going from where we were and handling this off season and both free agency and the draft and with our trades the way that we did, I I think it was an absolute masterclass and getting the shakeup we needed and getting the turnover we needed to feel like there’s hope and we have a chance for the 2025 season. Wow. Again, maintaining a really good position for 2026 27 28 and going forward. I don’t think you could have pulled this off much better than than what K was able to do. And I got to give Tomman credit. I’ve been giving Tomlin credit and how we’ve handled this offseason, too. If we want to talk about Tomlin’s influence over personnel and the quarterback situation over the past couple seasons and you know him not playing Dodson in the right position and that also like if we want to critique that I think we also got to give credit for Tomlin’s pivot of saying like we got to we got to move off of Fields and Russ we got to get more explosive on offense. uh bring in Rogers, move off Naji, draft Caleb Johnson, bring in Kenneth Gainwell, make the moves that we did on defense to get better as a rush defense. So like Tomman gets the credit too, but Omar Khan again in terms of value, contracts, draft picks, all that stuff. Like the the task that he has at hand that we like definitive definitively know that he oversees. Hey, A+ the dude’s done an excellent job. I don’t think you could ask for much more. Um, hell, I wish I wish he was the GM for the Big Ben era. I mean, who who knows who Big Ben could have been thrown to across from uh AB? Could have had AB and Calvin Johnson, maybe. Who knows? Maybe we actually would have had Thor Rivas on our defense for a couple seasons and those rumors that we were potentially going to trade for him or sign for him actually became reality because that’s that’s the type of that Omar Khan does. Like we got DK Metaf, we have Jaylen Ramsay now. Like like come on, bro. Come on. Who would have thought? But yeah, shout out to Omar. I think this is obviously a good move for the Steelers and and Omar Khan. Looking forward to the future and the next three or four years with Omar being GM. I think it’s Yeah, I I think we’re in a good spot. Really good spot. That’s it for today’s show. Let me know your thoughts down in the comments. Stay chilling. base.

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