Steelers trade for Scobee

The Steelers on Monday traded for placekicker Josh Scobee, who had spent all of his career in Jacksonville.

On the surface, it seems like a move made out of desperation. But when you look a little deeper, it appears the Steelers might have made an upgrade not only over Garrett Hartley, but over Shaun Suisham - at least in some aspects - as well.

Scobee has long been one of the better long-distance kickers in the league, making 62 percent of his career kicks from 50 yards and beyond. And, perhaps more importantly, he is a legitimate kickoff guy.

Scobee had an off season last year on field goal attempts, making 20 of 26 - though three of the misses were beyond 50 yards - but he had 63 kickoffs and just 20 of them were  returned.

Suisham had 89 kickoffs last season, but 54 were returned.

Hartley, well, he wasn't much of a kickoff guy at all. In fact, he just wasn't good at it, kicking line drives that failed to make it into the end zone.

Scobee's career make percentage of 80.9 percent isn't as good as Suisham's 84.1, but what the Steelers will give up - at least for this year - in made field goal percentage, they'll gain in kickoffs.

The big thing with Scobee is that he'll cost the Steelers $3.4 million this season. He'll be a free agent at the end of the year, so they'll likely go back to Suisham. The Steelers and Jaguars are splitting Scobee's salary.

That could be enough to still do something with Kelvin Beachum before the season starts, but time is running out on that.

* The Martavis Bryant suspension news came down today.

I'm not going to delve into it to greatly, but I did clear up a couple of things.

This would have been Bryant's third positive test. The first puts you in the system and for the second, you are docked two game checks. The third positive test now results in a mandatory four-game suspension.

Obviously, the Steelers knew about Bryant's other positive tests. It's likely a big reason why they selected Sammie Coates, who has a similar skill set to Bryant, at least in terms of speed and size, in the third round of the draft this year.

Also, both Bryant and Le'Veon Bell will be permitted in the Steelers practice facility during their suspensions.

This was not always the case. The league used to ban players who were suspended from team facilities during those periods. Now, that is only the case, at least for banned substances, if the suspension is under one year in length.

If the player is suspended for PED usage, they are not permitted in the facility at any time.

* The team made its roster cutdowns today to 75. The only players that stood out to me were safety Ian Wild and receiver C.J. Goodwin.

Wild, who also has lined up at linebacker at times, might have lost out to Jordan Dangerfield's knockout blow on special teams against the Bills. I still think he'll be a possibility to come back on the practice squad.

Goodwin also was released in the first roster cutdowns last year and was signed back to the practice squad. But he missed a significant portion of training camp with a shoulder injury, which hurt his chances.

In many cases, the first cutdown is made to make sure the team has enough players at each position to get through the final preseason game.

Don't read too much into players being let go now.