Aug 31, 2017 3 min read

In a matter of two days, the Steelers might have solved their two biggest issues from the past two seasons, trading for field-stretching tight end Vance McDonald and signing cornerback Joe Haden.

Over the next couple of days, the final pieces of what Pittsburgh hopes will be a Super Bowl season will fall into place.

The first will come Friday when running back Le’Veon Bell signs his franchise tender tag and rejoins the team.

The second is expected to also come Friday, or early Saturday, when wide receiver Martavis Bryant is fully reinstated by the NFL after being suspended all of last season.

The additions of McDonald and Haden were nice complementary moves in which the Steelers gave up little to acquire.

They sent the 49ers a fourth-round draft pick and were returned McDonald and a fifth-round selection.

In this year’s draft, that would have moved them back 11 spots to acquire a former second-round draft pick who is making just $2.1 million this season and is signed through 2021.

Haden, meanwhile, cost the Steelers nothing in terms of draft picks after being released by Cleveland earlier in the week.

Haden turned down offers from other teams – Dallas and Miami among them – because the Steelers offered him something those teams did not: a chance to win a Super Bowl.

The Steelers have the look of a team that is “going for it.”

Too often over the years the team has been perhaps unfairly criticized for not doing just that.

Pittsburgh didn’t always have the available cap space to make moves like these in previous years, even in free agency.

And it has long felt the way to build is through the draft.

But quarterback Ben Roethlisberger’s open talk of retirement in the offseason might have spurred the team to gamble a little more than usual.

“That’s the way he wants to approach it and that’s how we’ll approach it,” said general manager Kevin Colbert, who signed a two-year contract extension Thursday, on the team’s pre-game broadcast before their preseason finale at Carolina.

“We’ll take it year-to-year. We’re going to try to win this year and worry about the future in the future.”

That might sound a little unlike the Steelers, but in reality, it’s how they look at every season.

Pittsburgh has gone into every season over the past couple of decades believing they have a chance to win the Super Bowl.

But the moves they made this week and the ones that will be coming over this weekend could make that an even greater possibility.

They expected to get Bell back. They have also remained hopeful that Bryant would continue to walk the straight and narrow and eventually be reinstated by the league.

Acquiring a player with Haden’s resume – which includes a pair of trips to the Pro Bowl – was the icing on the cake.

“A guy like Joe Haden is not available very often, especially at this time of year, so we would have been negligent had we not looked into it,” Colbert said. “We think he’s still a very good player that can help us in the secondary.”

We’ll see in February if these aggressive moves pay off. But they certainly looked good on the final day of August.

Dale Lolley can be reached at dlolley@observer-reporter.com