Steelers Should Pass on Tight End Jermaine Gresham

With Free Agency only a couple of weeks away, plenty of people have started throwing around names that the Steelers could potentially bring in to help them fill in some gaps before the draft.

One name I’ve seen thrown around by fans, and even some that write on the Steelers professionally is Bengals’ Tight End Jermaine Gresham.

At a glance it seems like a logical move. Gresham’s a young (still just 26) guy, with a skillset good enough to get him drafted in the first round that’s just never completely delivered on that potential. He’s decent in all areas, and would be working in tandem with Heath in the short term.

With guys on the market like Julius Thomas and Jordan Cameron, someone like Gresham would probably also come pretty cheap.

I don’t claim to know a ton about free agents from other teams, but as someone that lives in Cincinnati, I can tell you we want no part of Jermaine Gresham. Bengals fans can’t wait for this guy to leave.

In the first 5 years of his career, Gresham has averaged 56 catches, 544 yards, and 4.8 touchdowns per season. Not terrible… For comparison Heath in his first 5 season averaged 48 catches, 544 yards, and 5.2 touchdowns.

Gresham’s had some issues with fumbles, that seemingly always come at crucial points in games, fumbling 11 times and losing 6 of those. Heath Miller fumbled 3 times, and lost 1 in the same amount number of seasons.

I should note that season 5 is really when Heath’s career really took off. It’s possible Gresham could go from average to exceptional… but I just don’t see it.

Gresham was Andy Dalton’s #1 target for much of the season, with AJ Green hobbled, Marvin Jones hurt in training camp, and Mohammed Sanu’s streaky play. Despite that he still didn’t blow up like Bengals fans wanted the former 22nd overall pick to.

So there’s been plenty of first round picks that didn’t live up to superstar status, but are still solid players… sure.

The problem with Gresham is he seems to lack focus, and has an attitude problem.

When I say he lacks focus, you can see that shown by his 34 accepted penalties in his career, 17 of those being false starts… Heath Miller has had 5 false starts in his 10 years.

Again, while his numbers aren’t awful, Gresham just always seems to drop the ball both literally and figuratively when the Bengals needed him in crunch-time situations.

There’s also questions of Gresham’s commitment to the team.

Last December the Bengals were going into a big divisional matchup against the Browns, who’d smoked them on Thursday night football a few weeks earlier. Bengals radio analyst Dave Lapham commented that Gresham looked fine in pre-game warmups but would not be playing that day because of injury.

The Bengals would have their best game of the season and blank the Browns 30-0.

Following the game Lapham was interviewing Marvin Lewis in a locker room in the midst of celebrating a big win, when Gresham took the air out of the room.

Gresham interrupted the interview with his head coach to confront Lapham, saying he heard Lapham said he “quit” on his team.

Regardless of what was said, it was selfish and immature for Jermaine to ruin a good moment for the team.

All of these things combined really make me think the un-tapped potential of Jermaine Gresham is not worth the headache.