Steelers GM Omar Khan’s hardball tactics may end up costing him a lot more than Brandon Aiyuk

After months and months of holding, Pittsburgh Steelers fans finally took a deep breath on Thursday night, with San Francisco 49ers WR Brandon Aiyuk coming to a resolution in his contractual impasse.

Only it wasn’t the resolution they were hoping for:

And now, the questions about the WR position will only grow, with the blame heading straight to GM Omar Khan’s desk:

“At the end, it was either going to be Steelers or 49ers and Brandon Aiyuk,” Ian Rapoport said on NFL Network’s The Insiders on Thursday. “The Steelers didn’t have a receiver. They were never going to trade Pickens. Didn’t have a receiver to trade the 49ers. They couldn’t do a deal.”

Look, the issue isn’t that Khan and the Steelers missed out on Aiyuk. The issue is, Khan and Co. put all their eggs in that basket, wouldn’t go all the way in, and now have nothing to show for it. The 53-man roster is set and the team has five WRs in the position grouping:

• George Pickens
• Van Jefferson
• Calvin Austin III
• Roman Wilson
• Scotty Miller

That simply is not good enough in the modern NFL, but especially with a questionable QB situation and an offensive line that just lost their best player until October.

So the end result is what it is, but the process is where things become problematic.

I understand that this deal got very close to being done multiple times, with the Denver Broncos ultimately being the hold-up, but trusting two teams to fix your problems is once again, bad process.

Banking on the situation in San Francisco to reach a boiling point, he was right all the way up until the end.

There was a point on Wednesday where Khan and the Steelers had the leverage. A disgruntled Aiyuk skipped practice, openly defying his HC and GM, raising tensions to an all-time high.

Problem is, if you know a team wants either a first-round pick, or one of your players and you’re unwilling to part ways with either, then you’re unserious in your efforts.

A little sweetening of the pot and Aiyuk is wearing black and gold in 10 days.

Instead, a Steelers offense that you had to squint to believe in, has been left standing at the altar and their GM is the one who objected.