Wouldn't Willie Anderson Look Nice In Black and Gold?

On a Steelers e-mail list I'm on, a rather reasoned Steelers fan made the point of shrugging his shoulders about the Steelers decision to slap the transition tag on Max Starks. As he explained--it's the Steelers' money, and they had the salary cap room, so why should we worry that the Steelers spent nearly $7 million on a backup.

As you're probably noticed by me hammering repeatedly on how stupid it was to slap a tag on Starks, I worry a lot about that $7 million. Not because the Steelers made Starks one of the league's highest-paid offensive linemen, even though they didn't really give him a chance to start, but because the $7 million spent on Starks meant that they couldn't spend that money elsewhere.

Would you rather have Starks as a backup, or Alan Faneca on the franchise tag for one year (which would have meant that Kendall Simmons could have been benched or moved to center). It would have only cost an additional $500,000.

OK, say that the Steelers had a quiet deal with Faneca promising to not franchise him to help get him into camp and do his job last year. Would you rather have Starks or the money to go after Willie Anderson (a four-time Pro Bowler), who was just released by the Bengals. Signing Anderson would allow the Steelers to stick him at right tackle and move Willie Colon inside to guard, or would allow them to move Marvel Smith to right tackle while Colon slid inside.

Apparently the Steelers are not one of the six teams in the running for Anderson, which makes sense since the Steelers don't have the cap room to sign him.

All of those options would be significantly better than what the Steelers did by slapping a transition tag on Starks. And it also ignores the fact that the Steelers could have potentially signed Starks for significantly cheaper if he hit free agency and found no takers.