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Joe Haden makes a catch during practice Thursday at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex.
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Joe Haden offers the Steelers something new in the secondary: hope

Lake Fong/Post-Gazette

Joe Haden offers the Steelers something new in the secondary: hope

At long last, the Steelers found another Pro Bowl cornerback, their first in 21 years since Rod Woodson earned his seventh Pro Bowl.

Joe Haden did not make the Pro Bowl with the Steelers, but with Cleveland in 2013 and 2014. At least they now have their first cornerback with that on his resume since Woodson did so in 1996.

The Steelers’ frustrating search to find competent cornerbacks began not long after Woodson’s departure, and it continued right up through their signing of Haden Aug. 30 after the Browns cut him.

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Haden will start against his old team in Cleveland Sunday along with Artie Burns, representing yet another different set of opening-day cornerbacks for the Steelers. They have had seven different starting cornerbacks in the past three seasons, and Haden makes eight to start this one.

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They scoured the colleges, NFL rosters and the unemployed to find cornerbacks without much success. They drafted them, traded for them, signed them off the street and picked them up after being waived.

It reached such a point that even though Ross Cockrell started all 16 games for the Steelers at cornerback last season, they deemed him not worthy enough to make their roster and dealt him to the Giants for a conditional draft pick.

That’s nothing. The cornerback who started all 16 games in that spot in 2015 announced his retirement Tuesday. Antwon Blake signed as a free agent with the Titans last year, then with the Giants this year, changed his name to Valentino Blake and walked out on the Giants in August, never to return.

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Why have the Steelers not been able to find good corners, for the most part? Bad luck has been part of it, with second-round 2015 pick Senquez Golson the latest example. He barely practiced through his first two seasons and this one before the Steelers finally gave up on him. Now rookie third-round pick Cam Sutton is out for at least the first half of the season with a hamstring injury.

General manager Kevin Colbert blamed part of their failure to acquire good corners on the team’s success and thus low first-round draft choices as the norm.

“I think if you look at that position, a lot of the top corners are top picks ,and we’ve never really been in position to draft in that position,’’ Colbert said. “It really goes back before me. Chad Scott was the highest guy picked. Chad was a later first-round pick and he had a good career.”

Scott, the NFL’s 24th overall draft choice in 1997, played seven seasons with the Steelers, with 89 starts at cornerback and 19 interceptions. He played two more with the Patriots before his career concluded in 2006.

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It took the Steelers another 19 years to draft their next first-round cornerback, Burns in 2016. Between those two, there has been a swinging door of cornerbacks, which is precisely how many of them covered the forward pass.

They missed badly with two second-rounders, Ricardo Colclough (2004) and Golson. They found their best cornerback during that time in the fourth round of the 2003 draft, Ike Taylor.

“A lot of the top, top guys are usually higher picks and the other guys, we all get fortunate here and there with a two, three or four, whatever,’’ Colbert said. “We feel good about the guys we have. It’s not like we tried to ignore the position, it’s who was available.

“It’s tough to predict health. All you can really look at is their injury history in college. Sometimes younger kids don’t adapt to this game.”

‘All in’? Not really

This notion that the Steelers are putting all their efforts into the 2017 season because it may be Ben Roethlisberger’s last — or at the least one of his last — does not take into account that it’s been done before, many times.

They probably would have made this flurry of moves in the days before the start of the regular season had Roethlisberger already retired and Landry Jones was their starting quarterback.

They’ve traded away players at the end of training camp before, acquired players via trade during that time and picked up others to help shore up their roster.

OK, so they never paid $7 million to add a cornerback 11 days before the start of the season. But that’s when Joe Haden became available. There were a reported dozen teams interested in signing Haden after the Browns released him, and it’s likely not all of those saw their windows shrinking — or even open for that matter.

As Colbert said the day after they signed Haden, it would have been negligent for them not to pursue him. Cornerback has been their weakest position for years and this was a no-brainer chance for them to improve it. Plus, Haden wanted to play here.

The other trades merely boosted their depth.

They acquired tight end Vance McDonald from San Francisco plus the 49ers’ sixth-round draft choice in exchange for the Steelers’ fifth-rounder in 2018. That may be the difference of just 10 spots, counting comp picks at the end of the fifth round if the Giants go 2-14 again.

McDonald may not even start. Safety J.J. Wilcox won’t either as long as Mike Mitchell remains healthy. They got Wilcox for Tampa Bay plus the Bucs’ seventh-round pick for the Steelers’ sixth in 2018. Again, minor-league stuff.

They also picked up that sixth-round draft choice from Cleveland for Sammie Coates, also sending the Browns the seventh-rounder they later received in the Wilcox trade.

Those all were trades to enhance their depth, certainly nothing that would represent they were going all-in.

The lone exception was Joe Haden.

Ed Bouchette: ebouchette@post-gazette.com

First Published: September 7, 2017, 10:21 p.m.

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