PITTSBURGH — The Brandon Aiyuk saga came to an anticlimactic end Thursday when the 49ers announced he had signed a four-year extension to remain with the team. The Steelers were reportedly one of the strongest candidates to be a trade partner with the 49ers, with several reports indicating that the two teams had reached a trade framework — but it never came to fruition.

The spin in the aftermath has been that the Steelers are not shocked by Aiyuk’s decision. They had expected it.

Thus, they aren’t necessarily disappointed they couldn’t work out a deal.

I say hogwash to that.

The Steelers would not have pushed so hard for so long if they didn’t think there was a very strong possibility that a trade would get done. You don’t waste this much time trying to get a deal done if you don’t think there is any chance it could happen.

There were so many conflicting reports about how close these teams were to actually making a deal that I am not sure anyone fully knows what was true and what was rumor-mill nonsense. That is a part of the story as well — how poorly it was reported and thus how much is actually known about the Steelers’ degree of involvement in trade discussions.

Regardless, the two teams were engaged in trade talks, and the Steelers' interest in Aiyuk was real. More importantly, by showing so much interest in Aiyuk, the Steelers acknowledged they still have a gaping hole in their roster at the receiver position.

Omar Khan has done an incredible job since he took over as general manager, but he has swung and missed badly in his handling of the receiver since the end of last season.

It is the one area I look at and say, “What exactly is the plan?” That is mainly because there doesn’t seem to be a plan, and frankly, it looks even worse because they traded away their second-best receiver, Diontae Johnson, in March.

That left the wide receiver group with George Pickens and ... yeah, George Pickens.

Oh, I know they had training camp hero Calvin Austin still hanging around, but for the most part, the Steelers had Pickens to begin the offseason.

Since then, they have added several nameless, faceless players, such as Van Jefferson and Scotty Miller — and then drafted Roman Wilson out of Michigan.

They still didn’t address their biggest need, though: a second receiver to complement Pickens.

That’s no disrespect meant to Wilson, Jefferson and company, but one is a rookie, and the rest are all veterans who have been much better suited in roles as third or fourth receivers than anyone else.

That’s why Mike Tomlin’s comments after the Johnson trade — which brought back cornerback Donte Jackson — were so strange to me.

"Really it was simple, man. We traded player for player, we had an opportunity to get (Jackson)," Tomlin said in March. "D-Jack is a guy we've evaluated probably several times since he's been in the league. When he came out of LSU, when he faced free agency. We needed some assistance and depth and quality players at that position, and so we made the move. They needed Diontae. We needed D-Jack. It was a good exchange."

I agree that cornerback was an area of need, but I would argue that receiver was an area of even greater need. I just didn’t understand why fortifying one position by unloading one of your only two assets at another position made sense. It didn’t make sense then, and now it makes even less sense.

But let’s go with the idea that they needed to fortify their cornerback spot and felt like Johnson was replaceable. I still am not entirely buying it, but if that was the case, what was the plan to replace him for this season? Wilson will likely be able to fill a role as a top-two receiver in the next year or two, but this year, he is a rookie, and there will be a learning curve and growing pains.

Everything the Steelers have done this offseason suggests they are playing to win this year. They signed an aging veteran quarterback to a one-year deal and brought in a second quarterback with the idea he might be able to prove he deserves a contract extension. Two quarterbacks they are hoping to hit lightning in a bottle with, and both are costing almost nothing.

You don’t do that without ensuring the receiver position is ready to compete at a high level this year, too. Again, Wilson is a Rookie, Austin would have a Gold jacket if being great in training camp mattered, and Jefferson is not going to move the needle at all. And they have the money under the salary cap thanks to their quarterback salary, which means they could have done a number of things to improve.

I just don’t think the receiving corps is good enough, and I figured there was another move coming after they traded Johnson away. And let’s get this straight: Johnson wasn’t a world-beater, but he would easily be the second-best receiver on this roster, and he hasn’t necessarily been adequately replaced.

Khan and company have been almost perfect in their decision-making since he took over, but they have failed in this area in many ways. Maybe it was as simple as they put all of their eggs in the Aiyuk basket, and if that’s the case, it makes it even worse. They didn’t or don’t seem to have a plan B, and quite frankly, I am convinced they didn’t even have a Plan A on this.

Maybe it all works out, and training camp Austin becomes regular season Austin, Jefferson proves he was way underutilized in his previous stops, and Wilson becomes an instant star. That could happen, I suppose.

But I have some serious doubts.

Given how bad this plan seems to be, Khan needs this to happen.

Because if it doesn’t work out, it will undermine the progress they claim they have made on offense heading into the 2024 season.

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