Backroom Buzz
By Jerry DiPaola

If you think Steelers' coach Bill Cowher is stepping back from making personnel decisions after a bad draft and a bad season in 2003, think again.

Cowher's bloody fingerprints, and those of assistants Ken Whisenhunt and Kevin Spencer, were all over the release of punter Josh Miller. Whisenhunt and Spencer used to work with new Steelers' punter Chris Gardocki, and pushed for him. Miller and Spencer, the Steelers' special teams coach, did not dislike each other, but they barely spoke last season.

The expenditure of a $1.1 million signing bonus on Gardocki seemed unnecessary, but the people who are paid handsomely to decide such things believe he is better than Miller.

He's No. 3

Clark Haggans was the Steelers' third choice to replace Jason Gildon at left outside linebacker. Marcus Washington only used the Steelers as leverage to get more money out of the Redskins and Carlos Emmons wanted a bigger contract than the Steelers were willing to give him.

Director of football operations Kevin Colbert and others in the organization spent a lot of time and money - those steaks at Morton's aren't cheap - trying to woo Washington, who knew all along he would sign with the Redskins.

That said, Haggans is an upgrade over Gildon.

Troy To The Rescue

Former No. 1 pick Troy Edwards (Class of 1999) finally will pay off for the Steelers in the form of a sixth-round draft pick this year. The Steelers got the pick by trading Edwards to the St. Louis Rams, who ended up releasing him.

A year after their worst draft in many years yielded only five players, two of whom actually got on the field, the Steelers will have nine picks in the seven-round draft. They didn't have to give up a pick to the Philadelphia Eagles after getting wide receiver/kick-returner Freddie Milons in a late-summer trade. Terms of the deal stated that no compensation was necessary if Milons didn't get into a game.

He was inactive all season.

Burress Out Of Here?

You can't turn on a computer these days without seeing some message board spewing forth details of the latest rumored trade ofwide receiver Plaxico Burress.

No doubt, Burress' name has come up in conversations between Colbert and officials from other teams, but trading him would be a mistake.

Sure, he will difficult to sign and not worthy of the eight-digit signing bonus that he will demand next year. But the Steelers believe that getting a big effort out of him in his contract year would be in the team's immediate best interests.

Unless trading Burress allows the Steelers the luxury of moving up in the draft and selecting Eli Manning, Larry Fitzgerald, Sean Taylor or Robert Gallery, keeping him on the roster for the rest of this year is the best move the team can make.