Even during draft, ex-Steelers return

Associated Press

PITTSBURGH

The NFL draft is supposed to be about the new. New players. New hope for downtrodden teams. The unofficial start to a new season.

Apparently the Pittsburgh Steelers didn’t get the message. On the final day of the NFL’s inaugural three-day draft, they brought back yet another familiar face for what already is being called the 2010 Steelers Reunion Tour.

Bryant McFadden, a starting cornerback in the Super Bowl team 15 months ago but a flop after signing with Arizona, became the latest ex-Steeler to be brought back by Pittsburgh. He was reacquired Saturday at a modest cost, a fifth-round pick, and the Steelers also gained a sixth-round pick they used on Central Michigan wide receiver Antonio Brown.

A number of longtime Steelers players — Joey Porter, Dan Kreider, Clark Haggans, Sean Morey among them — made the move West to play for former Pittsburgh offensive coordinator Ken Whisenhunt’s Cardinals. McFadden is the first to make the return trip.

“It’s a shocking feeling ... It was unexpected,” McFadden said. “A got a few phone calls [Friday] and my eyes got opened about the situation. ... It’s kind of like ‘wow.’”

McFadden, who was due $4.75 million next season, agreed to a three-year contract despite not making an interception last season. The Steelers didn’t want both projected starting cornerbacks, Ike Taylor and McFadden, playing out their contracts in the same season.

They were expected to land a cornerback during the draft, but certainly not this cornerback.

“He played on two world championship teams here,” coach Mike Tomlin said. “We know the player, and we know the person. We followed that in several instances during the offseason, guys who understand what it means to be a Pittsburgh Steeler.”

Once known as a franchise that never brought back players once they left, the Steelers have re-signed wide receiver Antwaan Randle El and inside linebacker Larry Foote and traded for McFadden and quarterback Byron Leftwich since early March. Foote, McFadden and Leftwich also played on the Steelers’ Super Bowl-winning team during the 2008 season.

The most intriguing of their seven picks Saturday was sixth-rounder Jonathan Dwyer, a productive runner at Georgia Tech in need of polishing. Seen as a possible second- or third-round pick by some scouts, Dwyer experienced one of the steepest freefalls of any draft pick.

The Steelers chose Jason Worilds of Virginia Tech in the second round, Thaddeus Gibson of Ohio State in the fourth and Stevenson Sylvester of Utah in the fifth. In the seventh, they added the Buckeyes’ DL Doug Worthington.

They added two wide receivers who thrived in pass-heavy offenses, third-rounder Emmanuel Sanders (SMU) and Brown, who caught a school-record 110 passes last season in the Mid-American Conference.