Tim Benz: Details of Steelers-Dolphins trade are easier to figure out than the big picture

If you are trying to wrap your brain around the pros and cons of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ trade with the Miami Dolphins on Monday morning, I don’t blame you.

I’ll let you know when I finish doing that myself.

Here’s what I do know. I know that Jonnu Smith and Jalen Ramsey are coming to Pittsburgh from Miami. I know Minkah Fitzpatrick is going back to the Dolphins, the team that traded him to Pittsburgh in the first place in 2019.

We don’t know what position Ramsey is really going to play because Darius Slay and Joey Porter Jr. are already the outside corners. We don’t know if those three will rotate or if Ramsey is going to be a hybrid between slot, safety and outside. We don’t know how much of Fitzpatrick’s deep middle duties are going to be absorbed by DeShon Elliott and/or Juan Thornhill. We don’t know if the Steelers are really going to go after free agent Justin Simmons as well, as has been theorized.

Finally, we don’t know if Smith and Pat Freiermuth are going to essentially become the No. 2 and No. 3 pass targets in the offense or if the Steelers are still trying to find a WR 2 better than Calvin Austin, Roman Wilson and/or Robert Woods.

That’s what we don’t know.

That’s a lot.

So, if you are looking for some sort of slow-roasted, long-marinated football oeuvre on this trade in a microwave turnaround time without the benefit of getting Omar Khan, Mike Tomlin or Teryl Austin on the record as to what their plans are, I hate to disappoint you.

It’s tough to write a “think piece” when I’m still trying to figure out what to think.

I’m not sure who “won the trade” yet. I’m not sure if all the shoes are done dropping, and I’m certain we haven’t been entirely told why Fitzpatrick going out the door was the fulcrum to make all of this a reality.

I’m not stunned that Ramsey and Smith are here. I am surprised Fitzpatrick’s exit is what made it happen.

Therefore, instead of manufacturing a phony hot take I’ll eventually regret, let’s focus on some important details from this trade and worry about the big picture later, once the canvas is actually fully painted.

• If Ramsey is going to move around, this makes the Steelers deeper and more versatile. I don’t know if it makes them better.

At the very least, if Slay or Porter Jr. suffer an extended injury, the Steelers aren’t sunk on the outside in the secondary now. They may have been before this deal.

They are certainly thin at safety, though, even if Ramsey ostensibly plays in that role quite a bit. Thornhill better be (much) better — and healthier — than he was in Cleveland if this is going to work.

• One of the two DBs involved in this trade is overpaid, may be living on reputation and had minimal turnover productivity last year.

OK. Guess which one I’m talking about.

Yeah. Exactly.

Ramsey is 30 and had just two interceptions last year. Fitzpatrick, 28, had one pick and a forced fumble. Neither player has been the ball-hawking game-changer we remember for a few years now.

For all his faults that became evident by the end of 2024, Donte Jackson had five interceptions and a fumble recovery last year. Beanie Bishop had four picks. Jackson is now a Los Angeles Charger, and Bishop is fighting to stay on the gameday roster. Yet those two combined for nine of the Steelers’ 17 interceptions last year. They were the only two players with multiple interceptions on the team.

To his credit, Elliott had two forced fumbles and three fumble recoveries but just one pick. Porter Jr. (1), Ramsey (2), Slay (0), Brandin Echols (2) and Thornhill (0) combined for five interceptions in 2024.

Someone needs to get the ball back if the Steelers are going to be the splash-play defense they want to be. Austin’s unit tied for first place in the NFL with 33 takeaways. Bishop and Jackson were involved in 11 of them.

• In theory, adding Ramsey and Slay should allow the Steelers to play more man-to-man defense and perhaps blitz more often from varied spots on the field. The defense sent five men or more just 26% of the time last year, down from 30% the year before.

The Steelers’ defense got very vanilla last year. Anchoring Fitzpatrick in a deep center-field role was part of that problem. Then again, who else could capably play it?

If Ramsey can play slot, safety and outside at any point, snap-to-snap, that’s intriguing. Then again, after his eight turnovers in 14 games following his acquisition in 2019, I was told Fitzpatrick was a chess piece that could move around the board whenever the Steelers wanted.

Indeed, he played many roles here — just rarely multiple spots within a game or a season. It felt like the Steelers had a plan for him in any given year, then moved bodies around him training camp-to-camp instead of the other way around.

• I think it’s safe to say we can now dismiss a couple convenient narratives that were spoken into existence.

One of them last year was that the secondary communication issues were all Cameron Sutton’s fault because, well, it’s easy to blame the player who came on board halfway through the season after serving a suspension for violating the personal conduct policy.

Maybe it was partially the guy allegedly in charge of getting everyone in the right spot on defense, who then perhaps freelanced on his own too much.

The other one is that I kept hearing how Darnell Washington was “the big winner” of this summer’s minicamp. First of all, I don’t know who can really be a “big winner” of a minicamp.

Secondly, it looks like the prize he just won is being third on the depth chart at tight end now.