Mark Madden: Can Mike Tomlin look past meaningless games now to prioritize Steelers' future?

Receiver Chase Claypool was an underachieving ham-and-egger with a borderline attitude problem. No sentiment should be wasted on Claypool’s departure. Nor should anyone wonder about what might have been.

Trading Claypool to Chicago subtracts a weapon from rookie quarterback Kenny Pickett. The receiving corps is an injury away from absolute crisis.

But Pickett’s season was already haphazard, mostly because he became the starter before he was ready. There’s experience and then there’s good experience. The latter doesn’t apply to Pickett. He won’t improve much this season.

Claypool won’t join the Bears and morph into an All-Pro. A second-round pick provides an extremely generous return for the Steelers

The Claypool trade will mostly be remembered for being the day the Steelers gave up on the season. The Steelers surrendered.

That’s OK. The Steelers are accepting reality for a change.

What happens between now and season’s end will say a lot about the organization and its ability to recognize, repair and progress.

Winning and losing don’t matter. The Steelers won’t win enough.

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What matters is learning about what you have, and don’t. It’s about evaluation. It’s about developing the players you ultimately keep. It’s about establishing leadership and culture. It’s about roughing out a timetable for again being good.

Does coach Mike Tomlin understand that? Does he know how to do that? Can he prioritize beyond the next game?

Signals are mixed.

The Steelers traded Claypool with an eye toward the future. But they also acquired a 30-year-old cornerback from Washington.

As intimated prior, the ability to develop Pickett is crippled. The offensive coordinator and offensive line are inferior. Pickett gets no protection from the running game.

So far, Pickett is learning to be Duck Hodges, and he’s not even very good at that.

Tomlin has done his damnedest to scratch out meaningless wins before. It would be so Tomlin to, say, drop four spots in the draft by beating Cleveland in Week 18.

It would also be typical to beat New Orleans when resuming play after the bye week. T.J. Watt returns, the Steelers win at home and too many fool themselves into thinking a comeback is at hand. With Tomlin among those fooled.

It’s worth noting that the Steelers’ roster doesn’t necessarily feature many keepers. This is a real bad team.

It’s reminiscent of what Hall-of-Fame coach Chuck Noll said to his first Steelers team in 1969: “Our goal is to win a Super Bowl, but most of you won’t be here when we do because you’re not good enough.”

Noll was right. Tomlin would be right if he said that now.

But Tomlin isn’t Noll.

Noll, for example, would have never hired a bozo like Matt Canada to be offensive coordinator. Noll wouldn’t have been lazy and employed somebody underqualified just because they were already on staff. Noll hired football minds that could challenge his.

Canada is still employed in his role as chief boogeyman. Shielding Tomlin from blame seems to be one of his primary duties.

What if Canada got fired, and nothing changed? Who gets blamed then?

That’s why Canada hasn’t been fired.

If Pickett doesn’t have enough to work with, well, neither does Canada.