Biggest remaining needs for each AFC North team

Pittsburgh Steelers – Inside linebacker

Assuming star running back Le'Veon Bell and the organization come to some sort of agreement until the start of the season, the Steelers have more firepower on offense than any other team in the league. Their O-line can be dominant, they have weapons all over the place and Big Ben proves why he will end in Hall of Fame almost on a weekly basis.

However, the defense just came off allowing 45 points to Blake Bortles and company in the Divisional Round of the playoffs. To be honest, I thought that side of the ball was really coming along with the growth of young Artie Burns to go with Joe Haden and Cam Heyward wrecking gameplan’s on a weekly basis.

That was until their leader Ryan Shazier went down with a horrible injury. This pick strongly depends on what the Steelers plan to do with first-round draft pick Terrell Edmunds. Pittsburgh made the biggest surprise selections of day one when they selected the former Virginia Tech safety with the 28th pick and I immediately thought about in which role they would plan to use him.

The obvious one would be as a matchup piece to slow down the Patriots’ Ron Gronkowski, who sliced them up in the second half of their week 15 matchup, but what is Edmunds’ base position? My belief was that they would use him in a similar role to Arizona’s Deone Buccanon, who they drafted as a safety, but slid right in at linebacker as well.

Edmunds is even a little bigger than the Cardinals defender and it would make sense to pair him up with Vince Williams, who they like to blitz more on passing downs. If Pittsburgh actually plans to put him in at safety though, they have a huge hole at inside linebacker without Shazier. I don’t see Jon Bostic or Tyler Matakevich (who I really liked at Temple) as starting NFL linebackers.