Over the course of the past couple of years, the Pittsburgh Steelers have undergone an uncommon amount of change, which could have been largely correlated with the fact that the team had finished 8-8 in consecutive seasons while failing to advance to the postseason.
In deference to general manager Kevin Colbert, the attitude used to approach the offseason in those years was that this was an 8-8 team and these were 8-8 players. It’s little surprise that a lot of things changed during those years.
In spite of the comparatively small number of changes made since last offseason, however, some of them have certainly been significant, and one of the biggest has been the transition at strong safety from the retired Troy Polamalu to third-year player Shamarko Thomas, taking on a starting role for the first time in his career after playing just a couple of snaps on defense all of last season.