Browns trade CB Justin Gilbert to the Steelers

FrancoLambert wrote:

LambertWardSteel wrote:

Talent doesn't seem to be the issue. Hopefully he gets the right influence in Pittsburgh...maybe make James Harrison his 'big brother' to straighten him out. There are a lot of ifs and maybes, but it would be great to see the these high picks in the secondary come together and turn it into at least to a non-liability if not a strength.

New employees are sometimes assigned a "buddy" to ease the transition into a new job.  "How things are done around here."

I like your idea a lot.  James would make a great buddy for Gilbert.  

Honestly, I'm thinking Will Gay is a solid veteran that has done nothing more than grind out a 10 year career as a former 5th round pick. Think he is a solid mentor, as is his position coach.

Seriously, with a bunch of young guys like Davis, Cockrell, Golson, Burns around the secondary and some vets like Gay, Mitchell, Golden.....if this environment isn't right then there wont be any that is for Gilbert. Solid gamble to make IMO.

Ex-Browns CB Justin Gilbert 'grateful' for trade to Steelers

Jeremy Fowler
ESPN Staff Writer

PITTSBURGH -- After his first practice with the Pittsburgh Steelers, cornerback Justin Gilbert sounded like a guy relieved to reset his turbulent career.

The Cleveland Browns on Saturday traded Gilbert, the No. 8 overall pick in 2014, to corner-needy Pittsburgh in exchange for a sixth-round pick in 2018.

"Words can't even explain how excited I am," Gilbert said Monday. "I'm grateful."

Gilbert hopes to turn that gratitude into a more stable NFL career. Gilbert fell out of favor in Cleveland and managed 39 tackles in two seasons. He struggled with punctuality as a rookie, prompting Browns safety Donte Whitner to say publicly Gilbert needed to "grow up."

Two seasons later, Gilbert is using similar language.

to read rest of article:

http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/17471140/former-cleveland-browns-cb-justin-gilbert-grateful-trade-pittsburgh-steelers

I had mocked Gilbert to the Steelers in the '14 draft...damn we could have had Bradley Roby in that draft

New world for Steelers cornerback Gilbert

Chris Adamski | Monday, Sept. 5, 2016

Minutes after completing his first practice with the Steelers, Justin Gilbert didn't want to talk about what went wrong in Cleveland. The cornerback largely had polite but short and succinct answers concerning his past two seasons playing for the Browns.

Looking forward was a different story. Gilbert opened up most when talking about his impressions of his new teammates, about his new team's high expectations and about how he plans to fit in.

There was one Steelers-related question, however, in which Gilbert didn't have much to say.

His feelings on joining the Steelers?

“Words can't even explain,” Gilbert said, “how excited I am now.”

Wearing the No. 24 most recently of Doran Grant, who signed Monday with the Buffalo Bills after being cut by the Steelers two days prior — but that also was donned by the Steelers' most accomplished cornerback since the turn of the century (Ike Taylor), Gilbert didn't trash his former employers.

But he also didn't sound disappointed to go from the perennially bottom-dwelling Browns to join the Super Bowl-contending Steelers, who swapped a sixth-round pick for him Saturday.

“It's a lot different,” Gilbert said of the atmosphere at UPMC Rooney Sports Complex in comparison to the Browns' facility in suburban Cleveland.

“It's a little bit more laid back, I would say, but I think everybody here knows what this team is capable of. When we went onto the practice field, it was a whole different level. So I'm excited (to experience) that every day.”

Because it was his first practice with the team and Gilbert has a crash course in learning the defense ahead of him, his participation Monday was vanilla, teammates said. With William Gay and Ross Cockrell entrenched as outside cornerbacks, and rookie first- and second-round picks Artie Burns and Sean Davis also part of the secondary, Gilbert figures to be starting from the bottom in earning playing time.

But with a pedigree that includes being the No. 8 overall draft choice just 28 months ago, Gilbert has a ceiling that remained attractive to the Steelers, despite two years of mostly disappointment in Cleveland.

“We're happy to have him, no doubt,” starting safety Robert Golden said. “He's pretty cool. He's been laid-back for this first day, but I'm sure once he gets around us and we get around him, he'll get more comfortable and open up with us. But right now he's trying to learn how to adapt to this defense and get out there and help us the best way he can. And we know he can help us.”

Gilbert has the size (6-foot, 202 pounds) the Steelers covet in their cornerbacks and the speed (4.3 seconds in the 40-yard dash) that everybody in the NFL covets.

That's what made him such a valued commodity in the 2014 draft. Steelers general manager Kevin Colbert and coach Mike Tomlin visited Gilbert in Stillwater, Okla., for his pro day workout at Oklahoma State early that year — a sign of serious interest.

to read rest of article:

http://triblive.com/sports/steelers/11079522-74/gilbert-steelers-didn

If Burns turns into the real Deal...and this guy maximizes his potential..Goodbye bullshit Zone...hello Man/Press!

Talked to a few Browns fans and they said he was a waste. I'm thinking the change of scenery and looking at 6 Lombardis may do him some good.

stlrtruck wrote:

Talked to a few Browns fans and they said he was a waste.  I'm thinking the change of scenery and looking at 6 Lombardis may do him some good.

Mike Tomlin on Justin Gilbert: We don’t care what happened in Cleveland

Posted by Josh Alper on September 6, 2016



The Steelers traded a 2018 sixth-round pick for cornerback Justin Gilbert over the weekend and the price they had to pay for Gilbert illustrated how far Gilbert’s stock has fallen over his first two NFL seasons.

Gilbert was the eighth overall pick of the 2014 draft, but he had on-field and off-field issues that kept him from living up to the potential that caused him to come off the board as early as he did. On Tuesday, Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said that the issues Gilbert had with the Browns were of less importance to him than the fact that “we had a great deal of respect for” Gilbert when he was entering the league.

“We don’t care what happened in Cleveland, to be quite honest with you,” Tomlin said, via the team’s website. “We’re not asking a bunch of questions in that regard. We simply acquired a young cornerback that another team didn’t want or need, and we’re putting him in our environment and starting the process of going to work on a day-to-day basis and see where that leads us. I know he’s excited about being here. He had a good day of work [Monday], but we’ll live it day-by-day and we’ll see if his story can become a similar one to Ross Cockrell’s, for example.”

to read rest of article:

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2016/09/06/mike-tomlin-on-justin-gilbert-we-dont-care-what-happened-in-cleveland/

Environment won't correct bad character if that's what the problem was. Hope it wasn't and he becomes a valuable addition.

Organization stability and locker room leadership is the strength of this team. This kind of move is exactly what the team should explore. That's a competitive advantage which the Steelers should take more.

If Tomlin and James Harrison could not fix him, not many team can.

Vis wrote:

Environment won't correct bad character if that's what the problem was.  Hope it wasn't and he becomes a valuable addition.

Environment may not correct bad character. But I do believe environment could help to improve maturity.

kan_t wrote:

Vis wrote:

Environment won't correct bad character if that's what the problem was.  Hope it wasn't and he becomes a valuable addition.

Environment may not correct bad character. But I do believe environment could help to improve maturity.

I think it was the maturity with the Browns Tomlin was geting at not bad character. I personally think it was maturity that got him in trouble in Cleveland.

what will help Gilbert the most is competing with the other young DBs for playing time coach Lake and Butlers defense.

All these young DBs are fast and talented next years secondary should be a QB's nightmare.

Labriola on trading for Justin Gilbert

Bob Labriola
Steelers.com

In risk/reward analysis, adding Justin Gilbert for a No. 6 pick is worth doing.

Ready or not, here it comes:

* As a true freshman in college, he returned two kickoffs for touchdowns. He had five interceptions as a sophomore, including one apiece in games against Andrew Luck, Robert Griffin III, and Ryan Tannehill, all of whom currently are NFL starting quarterbacks. In 13 games as a senior, he had seven more interceptions and returned two of those for touchdowns.

* This same guy went to the NFL Combine and did 20 repetitions of 225 pounds on the bench press, and his 4.37 in the 40-yard dash was the fastest among all of the cornerbacks in Indianapolis that week. He finished his four college seasons with eight non-offensive touchdowns – two on interceptions and six on kickoff returns.

* He’s 6-feet tall. His arms measure 33-and-1/8 inches long. He will be 25 years old on Nov. 7.

* The name that belongs to the above set of facts and figures is Justin Gilbert, and you can have him on your football team in exchange for a sixth-round pick in a draft two years from now. Interested?

* There has to be a catch, right? NFL teams don’t have enough cornerbacks who are tall, fast, and interceptors of the football, let alone extra cornerbacks who are tall, fast, and interceptors of the football.

* The catch with Gilbert is that during his two years with the Cleveland Browns, who made him the eighth overall pick of the 2014 NFL Draft, he was an underachieving and insubordinate employee. After a less-than-productive rookie year, Gilbert admitted that he “missed a ton of team meetings” as a rookie because “I was a hard sleeper.”

* Clearly a knucklehead thing to say into a live microphone, and also evidence that the person saying it is tone deaf both to his situation and what it’s going to take to succeed in his chosen profession. And things never really got any better.

* Reports are that veterans Donte Whitner and Karlos Dansby tried to get through to Gilbert and were unsuccessful to the point of frustration. If Justin Gilbert actually had any idea of how to be a professional and a good teammate, he was showing no interest in walking that path, and his on-field performance wasn’t close to being good enough to put up with his shenanigans.

* When the Browns hired Hue Jackson on Jan. 23 to be their ninth coach since the franchise returned to the NFL for the 1999 season, Gilbert should have been aware he had been placed on the NFL version of double-secret probation. But not even that moved him enough to precipitate the type of change necessary to ingratiate himself to the new boss.

* The way it often works in the NFL is that when a new coach is hired, other teams will watch that roster carefully because there could be some opportunities for bargains as the new guy often cuts ties with a bunch of the players brought in by the previous regime. No sense taking the risk of going down the tubes with people to whom the new coach has no allegiance, and so from a rival GM’s point of view, it becomes a situation to monitor.

* The first indication that there might be some blue-light specials for shoppers perusing the Browns depth chart came when Barkevious Mingo – the sixth overall pick of the 2013 NFL Draft – was shipped to the New England Patriots* for a fifth-round pick in the 2017 NFL Draft. That indicated the Browns were open for business, and in the course of doing their due diligence as this preseason was drawing to a conclusion the Steelers were able to get in and get a deal done for Justin Gilbert without it becoming a competitive situation with another interested team.

* But isn’t is also possible that Gilbert was such a jerk in Cleveland that nobody else was interested? Certainly, but the Steelers had invested the time during the scouting process leading up to the 2014 draft to get to know Justin Gilbert, which, according to reports from Cleveland, the Browns did not. That was the team that spent the eighth overall pick on a player it didn’t interview at the Combine, that it didn’t bring in for a pre-draft visit, that it didn’t work out at any time during the run-up to picking him.

* Maybe the Steelers’ decision came down to the fact they took some time and put in a little bit of extra effort to get to know Justin Gilbert as an individual, where the Browns did not.

* Tom Reed wrote a story about Gilbert for Cleveland.com in which he talked to Shane Martin, who was Gilbert’s coach at Huntsville High School in Texas. In the story, Reed quoted Martin as saying, “He's a quiet kid and he hated talking to reporters. I'd end up having to answer the questions for him. He just never wanted the attention focused on him."

* More from Reed’s story: “But had the Browns spoken with Martin they might have learned how important establishing trust is with Gilbert. They might have learned how much his small hometown means to him. The high school coach has heard the stories of the cornerback being a loner in the Browns' facility and not wanting to participate in community events. Martin doesn't dispute the report. But it also doesn't mesh with his memories of Gilbert's prep career and the player's willingness to help out around Huntsville. Martin described him as a selfless athlete, a kid willing to play any position to help the team … Away from competition, Martin recalled (Gilbert) volunteering time to read to children as part of an educational program and organizing a community basketball tournament following his first season with the Browns … ‘Justin enjoys structure and it has to be there,’ Martin said.”

* Gilbert will get structure here, the kind of structure that comes from the stability that starts at the top of the organizational chart and runs through every aspect of football operations. With the Steelers, it’s the same team president, the same general manager, and the same coach, all the way down to the same video director and the same head trainer who all now are part of Justin Gilbert’s professional life.

* Maybe he still doesn’t succeed, but he has been put into an environment created to help players succeed. What he will have to do is apply himself, act like a professional, work hard, and be accountable to teammates who will prove to him they have too much of themselves invested in this program to allow him to derail their efforts.

* When Justin Gilbert comes to work these days, he walks past the six Lombardi trophies that are lined up in a row at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex and he goes to work for a team that lists competing for a championship as its goal for each and every season.

to read rest of article:

http://www.steelers.com/news/labriola-on/article-1/Labriola-on-trading-for-Justin-Gilbert/580f9c7e-b099-4c35-b530-e32b434bde5e

I'm hoping the change of scenery does him good. Just hope it's not another Boykins situation....

It reads and sounds like he never wanted to be a Brown..

Browns DC Ray Horton On If Steelers CB Justin Gilbert Has A Future: ‘Athletically, No Question’

http://www.steelersdepot.com/2016/09/browns-dc-ray-horton-steelers-cb-justin-gilbert-future-athletically-no-question/

stlrtruck wrote:

Talked to a few Browns fans and they said he was a waste.  I'm thinking the change of scenery and looking at 6 Lombardis may do him some good.

I live 35 miles south of Cleveland and I can assure you that if you ever find a rational Browns fan you better take a picture. Browns fans gauge a players worth by how willing he is to be a Brown.......PERIOD!

This kid is a gluehead but he has talent and he has been in a dysfunctional mess since the minute he was drafted. Can you imagine how Gilbert must feel going from the worst organization in the NFL to the best? Let's hope he can take advantage of his good fortune.

BKAnthem wrote:

It reads and sounds like he never wanted to be a Brown..

Would you? He had to play with Johnny Manziel as a the QB... Lol

spend your whole career not playing in the playoffs.

I would have liked to see him at the end last night in garbage time. Maybe he simply doesn't know the D well enough yet?

jak341 wrote:

I would have liked to see him at the end last night in garbage time. Maybe he simply doesn't know the D well enough yet?

Probably doesn't know it yet.

I noticed one play in Dime where Gay, Cockrell, Burns, Davis were CB and Mitchell, Golden at safety. Tells us a few things, like Shamarko isn't earning any time, even in dime. Burns knows enough of the scheme to play outside in the dime and Gilbert is definitely the #5CB at this point.

El-Gonzo Jackson wrote:

jak341 wrote:

I would have liked to see him at the end last night in garbage time. Maybe he simply doesn't know the D well enough yet?

Probably doesn't know it yet.

I noticed one play in Dime where Gay, Cockrell, Burns, Davis were CB and Mitchell, Golden at safety.   Tells us a few things, like Shamarko isn't earning any time, even in dime.  Burns knows enough of the scheme to play outside in the dime and Gilbert is definitely the #5CB at this point.

I think Shamarko is a lost cause. They said he was starting to turn it around in camp, but the fact you aren't seeing him anywhere but ST says a lot. Perhaps he will be just that for us; a good ST player and 3rd string safety backup.

jak341 wrote:

El-Gonzo Jackson wrote:

jak341 wrote:

I would have liked to see him at the end last night in garbage time. Maybe he simply doesn't know the D well enough yet?

Probably doesn't know it yet.

I noticed one play in Dime where Gay, Cockrell, Burns, Davis were CB and Mitchell, Golden at safety.   Tells us a few things, like Shamarko isn't earning any time, even in dime.  Burns knows enough of the scheme to play outside in the dime and Gilbert is definitely the #5CB at this point.

I think Shamarko is a lost cause. They said he was starting to turn it around in camp, but the fact you aren't seeing him anywhere but ST says a lot. Perhaps he will be just that for us; a good ST player and 3rd string safety backup.

Agreed, if he was turning a corner then he might see some time in the dime defense. The fact that the Steelers looked to Golden and Will Allen ahead of him last season and so far they are using Davis and Burns(who only saw 1 preseason game) in Dime defense, means he is likely a lost cause.

At this point, Thomas is probably behind Dangerfield on the depth if they needed Safety help.

Shamarko is a hard hitter on special teams....the way he comes flying in and throws his body at a target with reckless abandon....he'll probably end up taking out one of his teammates.

Not much going on upstairs.....obviously.

Brandon Boykin Wonders Why His Former Team Isn’t Playing CB Justin Gilbert

BY DAVE BRYAN SEPTEMBER 26, 2016

Thanks to it being the late afternoon nationally televised game, quite a few people got to see the Philadelphia Eagles drub the Pittsburgh Steelers 34-3 on Sunday and Chicago Bears cornerback Brandon Boykin was one of them.

Boykin, who is currently on the Bears Reserve/Injured list after suffering a pectoral injury several weeks ago, took to Twitter on Sunday to offer up some thoughts on the Steelers, who he played for last season.

Why Justin Gilbert not playing? .. ohh. hang in there big fella

to read rest of article:

http://www.steelersdepot.com/2016/09/brandon-boykin-wonders-former-team-isnt-playing-cb-justin-gilbert/

With the way our secondary played against the Iggles it seems to me that he may see the field sooner than later. I really hope he can play in this new environment. Zone coverage is fine part of the time. We desperately need CBs who can play zone and man..