The Pittsburgh Steelers ended up having four new starters out of five along the offensive line during the 2021 season in comparison to the year before, and that included three players who were entirely new to the organization that season, among them two rookie draft picks. That was not by design, according to general manager Kevin Colbert, talking about how the line developed on SiriusXM radio recently.
While they knew that they had two starters who were unrestricted free agents in Alejandro Villanueva and Matt Feiler, and they knew that, with the salary cap as it was at that time, they would not be able to keep them, they hadn’t necessarily expected Maurkice Pouncey to retire.