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Peter King: Tiki Barber Could Catch On With Steelers

Peter King guesses that the Steelers might be a good team for running back Tiki Barber, who is returning the NFL at age 36. 

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The Steelers have a core of veteran stars; Tiki Barber would fit right in. The Steelers have a good back, Rashard Mendenhall, but no back-of-the-future type who Barber would be robbing playing time from. And one NFL source tells me Barber really wants a shot to play in Pittsburgh. I'm also told that wherever he goes, Barber won't be content to be a mopup guy or insurance policy; he wants to play a lot.

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Well ... okay. The problem is, he's 36 and hasn't played since 2006. I guess anything's possible, but really, is he going to challenge Mendenhall for playing time? Is he even going to challenge Isaac Redman? It's very hard to imagine Barber "playing a lot" for the Steelers. He might be able to compete for scraps of time behind those two, with Jonathan Dwyer, Baron Batch and possibly Mewelde Moore, but at this point, I would imagine adding Barber would create a publicity circus that simply wouldn't be worth it. The chances of him helping looking very remote to me, and I'm more interested in seeing what Dwyer or Batch can do, even though they're inexperienced. It's possible that the Steelers will re-sign Moore or acquire some other veteran back, but I can't think of many I wouldn't prefer to Barber anyway.

Photographs by dizfunk used in background montage under Creative Commons. Thank you.