Whew, Ike Staying!

The deadline passed for another team to make an offer for Steelers restricted free agents Ike Taylor and Sean Morey. Now, it's imperative that the Steelers lock up Ike for the next 4-5 years. With Ike Taylor and Troy Polamalu roaming around in the secondary - youth and speed are not a concern. The only snag we could hit is if Ike's agent talks him out of taking the Steelers offer this offseason in hopes of landing a huge payday next year as an unrestricted free agent. The Steelers, of course, will try to get him for less than market value - hoping he'll take the smaller contract so he can get his hands on the signing bonus right now. The only upside for Taylor doing that is he gets to bank the money today instead of next year. It also protects him to some degree if he sustains a serious injury this year. He'll already have his signing bonus. I hope he doesn't gamble and he takes the Steelers offer, counters once, and then signs the Steelers second offer sheet. Everyone's happy with that ending. I was happy to see Sean Morey remain a Steeler also. $722,000 is a lot of money for a Special Teams player - but he is usually the first person down the field and unlike a lot of people with that distinction - he makes the tackle at least 30% of the time. I think he's valuable in that regard and one of the reasons special teams has gone from bad to good over the last 2-3 years. Signing him away from the Eagles was superb scouting in my opinion. Man, I can't wait for the draft. It's good knowing that we don't have a glaring weakness.