Pittsburgh traded veteran defensive lineman Steve Furness to…

The August 18, 1981 transaction is well documented and can be upgraded from the legacy placeholder copy without guessing at a downstream draft player. Pittsburgh's official franchise trade history lists its only 1981 trade as sending Steve Furness to Tampa Bay for an undisclosed future draft choice. UPI's same-day transaction report independently records Pittsburgh trading Furness to the Buccaneers and Tampa Bay acquiring him for an undisclosed future draft choice. Pro Sports Transactions adds the useful detail that the return was conditional on Furness's performance and marks the choice as not exercised or unresolved. Those records support a conditional future pick, but they do not identify a round, selection number or player that should be credited to Pittsburgh. Furness arrived in Tampa as a decorated Steelers veteran. He had been part of Pittsburgh's 1970s championship defenses and had started all 16 games for the Steelers in 1980. The trade gave Tampa Bay a low-cost preseason opportunity to evaluate an experienced defensive lineman. That opportunity ended quickly. Contemporary reporting on the final 1981 roster cuts states that Tampa Bay released Furness on August 31, less than two weeks after acquiring him. Pro Football Archives likewise records the Buccaneers transaction followed by his release and later signing with Detroit. NFL career statistics show his 1981 regular-season games with Detroit rather than Tampa Bay, so the Buccaneers received no regular-season appearances from the acquisition. Pittsburgh's side also produced no traceable realized return in the reviewed record. Because Furness did not survive Tampa's preseason, the performance condition tied to the future choice appears not to have produced an identifiable exercised selection. TradeVerdicts should not invent a round or downstream player. The fair hindsight accounting is therefore effectively zero regular-season value for both teams: Tampa received a short camp evaluation, and Pittsburgh moved a veteran but has no documented exercised draft asset to credit. An Even Trade verdict remains appropriate, but D grades fit the realized outcome better than the legacy C/C treatment. Confidence is high in the transaction and Furness's Tampa outcome, while the exact draft-condition mechanics remain less specific. R213 records only what the surviving evidence supports and leaves the unexercised or unidentified conditional choice unmapped.