Omar Khan finally made the wide receiver move he should have made eight months ago, but it seems unlikely that the delay will end up costing the Pittsburgh Steelers very much in the long run. The Steelers general manager pulled the trigger on a trade with the New York Jets at the trade deadline on Tuesday, sending a 2025 fifth-round draft pick to New York in exchange for veteran receiver Mike Williams.
Khan wanted to sign Williams this summer, but he had one visit scheduled before coming to Pittsburgh, and on that visit, he signed a one-year, $10 million contract with the Jets. The Steelers will now owe Williams just $627,500 for the remainder of the season. They went 6-2 in their eight games without Williams, or really anyone else as a functional deep threat opposite George Pickens.
So instead of signing Williams for $10 million, they’ll pay him 6.4% of that for the rest of the season, and part with one of their two fifth-round draft picks from next season r
Is that trade deadline deal a good one for the Steelers? Let’s dive in.
MIKE WILLIAMS STEELERS TRADE DEADLINE VALUE
The Steelers probably overpaid slightly for Williams, compared to what receivers have been going for on the open market.
Here are all of the wide receivers traded so far this season, and the compensation they were traded for:
Amari Cooper, CLE to BUF, Third-round and 2026 seventh-round picks, with a sixth-round pick going with Cooper to Buffalo.
Davante Adams, LV to NYJ, Third-round draft pick, conditionally upgrades to second-round pick.
DeAndre Hopkins, TEN to KC, Fifth-round draft pick, conditionally upgrades to fourth-round pick.
Diontae Johnson, CAR to BAL, Fifth-round draft pick, with a sixth-round pick going with Johnson to Baltimore.
Here are the 2024 statistics of those players with their pre-trade teams, along with Williams.
Amari Cooper: 6 games, 53 targets, 24 receptions, 250 yards, two touchdowns
Davante Adams: 3 games, 27 targets, 18 receptions, 209 yards, one touchdown
DeAndre Hopkins: 6 games, 21 targets, 15 receptions, 173 yards, one touchdown
Diontae Johnson: 7 games, 58 targets, 30 receptions, 357 yards, three touchdowns
Mike Williams: 9 games, 21 targets, 13 receptions, 166 yards
Williams was traded for the smallest return of the bunch, which matches his production, but it’s probably closer than it ideally should have been. If you could have Hopkins for a fifth or Johnson for a pick sway (the Steelers could not legally trade for Johnson), those are probably better deals than Williams for a fifth.
But the Steelers likely needed to meet that price to make a deal. The Jets are far from eliminated in what is a very soft middle of the AFC playoff picture, and with Aaron Rodgers pulling most of the strings in New York, he was never going to care much about draft pick compensation in return. Especially with Allen Lazard injured, keeping Williams was a viable option for the Jets, and the Steelers likely had to up the ante to get them to trade the veteran receiver.
After missing on so many wide receiver trade targets over the month since the Steelers traded Johnson away in the first place, it was a necessary overpayment. Khan couldn’t let the deadline pass without his team making some kind of an upgrade, and with the likes of Darius Slayton not moved, Williams is probably the best he could’ve done.
HOW DOES MIKE WILLIAMS FIT WITH THE STEELERS
How does Mike Williams fit in the Steelers offense with Arthur Smith? Like a glove.
Williams is at his best stretching the field as a deep threat. That’s a role that George Pickens has filled very nicely for the last three seasons, but having just one deep threat makes Pickens too easy for other teams to take away.
Having a second will make teams either commit to stopping the deep ball by playing two deep safeties, opening up Pat Freiermuth and the underneath receivers and lightening the box for Najee Harris, or it will force a single high safety to pick between Williams and Pickens, giving one of them a solo matchup.
Smith’s offense has not always used its second receiver a ton, but its second receiver has almost always been another deep threat wide receiver. KhaDarel Hodge and Corey Davis were not stars, but they filled that niche in the offense nicely.
Russell Wilson has always been the type of quarterback that is at his best pushing the ball down the field. He has trouble seeing open receivers in the middle of the field, anyway, so a sideline deep threat merchant like Williams is the kind of receiver that Wilson can make the most out of.
Williams is not a massive upgrade over the talent levels of Van Jefferson and Calvin Austin III, but he does give the Steelers three second-tier wide receivers with different skillsets that are all useful in their own ways.
INJURY INSURANCE FOR GEORGE PICKENS
The biggest thing that Williams provides, though, is someone able to replicate the role of Pickens, if something were to happen to him. The Steelers have been playing without a true backup to Pickens all season, and so much for he offense is predicated on his ability to stretch the field.
Without it, there is no punishment for defenses loading the box against Harris. Wilson is never going to be the kind of quarterback to run a Tom Brady-esque short passing game. This is the Steelers leaning into what they do well, making it a priority, and getting injury insurance for Pickens at the same time.
The noise would have been loud enough if Khan had failed to make a move by the deadline. Imagine what it would have been like if he did nothing now, and then Pickens got hurt later.
WHAT ABOUT THE FUTURE?
Williams is signed through the end of the 2024 season and will be a free agent in the spring. If things go well, there’s no reason the Steelers couldn’t re-sign him. It’s not as if 30 is ancient for a wide receiver.
If the Steelers would prefer to make a longer-term investment in their wide receiver position this offseason instead of bringing Williams back, and he plays well enough to be signed to a significant contract somewhere else, he would count toward the team’s compensatory draft pick formula.
All in all, Williams is not the same kind of player that the Steelers were dealing with when they were courting Brandon Aiyuk, but Williams fits their needs perfectly and comes at a trade deadline price that can be managed pretty easily.