If the on-the-clock Steelers traded the draft’s next pick, what could they get for it?

The Pittsburgh Steelers are on the clock — and as coach Mike Tomlin would say, “open for business.”

Speaking earlier this week, Tomlin was up front about his excitement regarding the No. 32 overall pick because as the top pick in the second round, there would be about a 20-hour lead-up to it. The thinking goes, that gives the NFL’s other 31 teams plenty of time to look over their draft boards, build up an affinity for a particular available prospect — and make a trade offer to get onto the proverbial clock themselves.

“That’s something that is probably going to have more of our attention in terms of the spontaneity of it or the uniqueness of it,” Tomlin said.

Considering the Steelers, as things stood heading into Friday, had no picks in the fourth through sixth rounds, trading down and picking up extra selections might be an attractive option.

Now up at #BreakfastWithBenz--Steelers excited about pick No. 32. https://t.co/uHhuXHF5kn Now they better figure out how to use it @TribSports @TribLIVE

— Tim Benz (@TimBenzPGH) April 25, 2023

Tomlin, in particular, noted that a quarterback-needy team might get antsy and overly eager to make an offer the Steelers can’t refuse.

“We’re acknowledging we’re not quarterback shopping,” Tomlin said. “That position (the first pick of the second round) might be one that attracts quarterback shoppers. So, it’s exciting to see what might transpire with some of those phone calls, the value that we might be able to get. It is a unique position for us to be in. We are very excited about it.”

The top two quarterbacks available are ones that many expected to go in the first round — Kentucky’s Will Levis and Tennessee’s Hendon Hooker. Levis was thought to be under consideration for teams picking as high as the top five.

As Tomlin alluded to, recent history has shown that the No. 32 pick indeed has attracted “quarterback shoppers.” Twice in the past nine drafts, a team traded to 32nd overall in order to take a QB.

(It should be noted that each of those No. 32 overall picks were in the first round and therefore more valuable because they afforded the team a fifth-year option in its contract with the selection — that fifth-year salary for a quarterback is coveted by teams).

In 2018, the Baltimore Ravens coveted the 32nd overall pick because they wanted future NFL MVP Lamar Jackson, who’d won the Heisman Trophy for Louisville. Four years prior, the Minnesota Vikings jumped to that spot to take another Louisville passer, Teddy Bridgewater.

Minnesota submitted a fourth-round pick to the Seattle Seahawks to jump up eight spots from No. 40. Baltimore had a farther gap to close — from No. 52 to No. 32 — so they had to give up more to the Philadelphia Eagles (a future second-rounder and the right for the Eagles to move up seven spots in that year’s fourth round) than the Vikings did to the Seahawks.

In a non-quarterback example of a team trading up for the first pick of the second round, in 2015 the New York Giants targeted Alabama safety Landon Collins and they traded fourth- and seventh-round picks to the Tennessee Titans to move up seven spots from 40th overall.

If the Steelers aren’t particularly enamored with anyone as they ponder where to go with the draft’s next pick, a similarly styled deal might appeal to them as a way to replenish some picks for Saturday while not dropping too far in Round 2.

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