On Wednesday, ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler reported the Pittsburgh Steelers placed a second-round tender on guard B.J. Finney.
The tender is worth $3.095 million for 2019 should Finney sign it. The Steelers placed the tender on Finney due to the believed high number of teams interested in signing him, and should another team sign him, Pittsburgh would receive a second round pick.
Finney is coming off a year where he filled in excellently for injured starters, showcasing capabilities to play consistently as a starter on the Steelers offensive line. The undrafted free agent out of Kansas State played all sixteen games in 2018, starting in two of those contests.
“There’s a whole lot of things that go on that are above my head. That’s what I have an agent for” Finney told PennLive.com‘s Jacob Klinger in regards to his free agent status earlier in 2019. “We’ll see what happens. Beyond that, I just — I don’t know. Like I’m not thinking about that right now. I’m thinking about today and what we can do today as a team and stuff like that. So, not really in a spot to answer that question.”
With the team needing to find a new deal with guard Ramon Foster and rumors of a departure with tackle Marcus Gilbert, the Steelers made a statement on the value of Finney by daring a team to send a second-round pick in exchange for his services.