Mark Madden: Don't rule out Steelers making insane decision during NFL Draft

The NFL wants to be everywhere 24/7/365. To be a constant in the news cycle.

The NFL Draft is proof of the league achieving that.

The draft used to take place in hotel ballrooms with GMs clutching legal pads. But in 1980, fledgling all-sports network ESPN wanted to televise the draft. Then-NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle didn’t see the appeal, but a deal got struck.

Now NFL cities bid to host the draft. The first two nights are prime-time TV. Last year’s first round drew more than 10 million viewers. The draft’s audience dwarfs that of the NBA and NHL playoffs.

It’s a far cry from when the draft debuted in 1936, with nine teams picking 81 players at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Philadelphia. In the draft’s early days, selected players would get notified and have no idea what was being talked about. “Drafted? Like, to the army?”

Motley Crue will perform at this year’s draft. The Steelers don’t have a fifth- or sixth-round pick, so they can’t take John 5 or Nikki Sixx. (I’m going to tell that joke, or variations thereof, till somebody laughs. Or shouts at the devil.)

The draft has created “experts” like Mel Kiper Jr. and Todd McShay, turning them into millionaires and stars.

Kiper Jr. got just six of 32 first-round picks correct in last year’s draft. McShay got five. But the day after each year’s draft, Kiper Jr. and McShay are reanointed, their mock drafts treated like Moses delivered them on stone tablets.

Nice work if you can get it.

To be fair, the draft is a crapshoot. We’re told that every draft pick can matter. That’s incorrect. Most don’t.

We’re told that every sixth-round pick can be the next Tom Brady. No other sixth-round choices have been, and none will be. For example, Daniel McCullers wasn’t.

But the draft is sports’ biggest event that doesn’t involve a game. Heck, it’s bigger than most games.

It’s the NFL brand. The proliferation of fantasy football likely hypes interest in the draft even further because it’s vaguely related to when you, the citizens, get to draft.

It’s got the big board, just like your fantasy draft. It just lacks the booze (as far as you know).

Pittsburgh waits with bated breath to see who the Steelers take on their way to 9-8.

This space mooted trading up to get Chicago’s pick at No. 9, then taking either Ohio State offensive tackle Paris Johnson Jr. or Georgia defensive lineman Jalen Carter.

But now it’s said that the only player the Steelers would be truly interested in trading up to get is Oregon cornerback Christian Gonzalez, and he will almost certainly be gone by the ninth pick. (So will Carter.)

So the Steelers will revert to their original plan of drafting Peezy’s kid at No. 17.

But some have an eerie feeling that Washington, at pick No. 16, will take whoever the Steelers want. (There isn’t really an “eerie feeling.” I just think it would be funny, and typical of every pick in every fantasy draft.)

If Peezy’s kid is gone, perhaps the Steelers could take Maryland cornerback Deontae Banks instead. Tomlin was a Maryland fan growing up. His brother and son played there. It would be the next best thing to drafting a crony’s son. #BuddySystem

Then, at pick No. 32, take whatever offensive tackle is left.

The Steelers, for some reason, aren’t sold on Johnson Jr., perhaps being scared off by the “Jr.”, as in Dan Moore Jr., who has done OK at left tackle for a fourth-round pick. If he’d been a sixth-round pick, Moore Jr. could have been the next Brady. Or McCullers. Or Mel Kiper Jr.

And then the Steelers go 9-8.

Don’t rule out the Steelers doing something absolutely insane, like picking a wideout even though their receiving corps seems perfectly aligned after the acquisition of Allen Robinson.

The Steelers haven’t picked a defensive lineman in the first two rounds since 2014 or an offensive lineman in the first two rounds since 2012. See? Insane.