3 players who were given too many snaps for Steelers in 2018

The Pittsburgh Steelers are typically good at balancing playing time, but here are three Steelers who were asked to play too many snaps in 2018.

The Steelers missed the playoffs in a dramatic fashion last year. After squeaking out a win over the Bengals, Pittsburgh relied on Baker Mayfield and the Browns to finish off the Ravens for the Steelers to get in. However, it wasn’t meant to be.

While their are many factors that come into play and plenty of blame to go around, I want to draw your attention to three players I believe were given too many snaps last season:

Terrell Edmunds: 92.53% of snaps

This one really isn’t excusable on the part of the Steelers. They should have made some sort of move to get a stop-gap player until Edmunds was ready. Instead, Pittsburgh forced the 21-year old safety into action right away.

Edmunds started 15 of 16 games last season, and played a remarkable 966 defensive snaps. In addition, the inexperienced rookie was asked to play an additional 48.58 percent of special teams snaps.

In comparison, Troy Polamalu was never asked to start a game as a rookie, and mainly played special teams to start his career. Fortunately, Edmunds was able to rebound late in the season, but he should have never been asked to do as much in the first place.

Sean Davis: 93.77% of snaps

Logging even more snaps than Terrell Edmunds was his counterpart in the backfield, free safety Sean Davis. The 3rd year safety was still in the process of learning a new position.

After jumping around at cornerback and strong safety, Sean Davis finally found a home at free safety. However, in his first year doing so, he was asked to play more snaps than anybody on the Steelers defense (979).

Sean Davis had his best season to date in 2018, but an injury could be devastating to the Steelers. If they continue to overwork him, that is exactly what could happen.

Cameron Heyward: 80.56% of snaps

I know just over 80 percent doesn’t seem like a monumental number, but in today’s NFL that is a lot for a defensive lineman. Many teams use two full rotations on their defensive line.

The Cowboys, for example, used Demarcus Lawrence 71 percent of the time and Tyrone Crawford just 61 percent. In the same way, the Steelers should look to preserve one of their best defensive players.

With Stephon Tuitt missing two games and fighting through an elbow injury most of the season, it was risky business to play Cameron Heyward as much as they did last season. It could have been disastrous had he and Tuitt been out at the same time.

Overall, the Steelers didn’t do a terrible job of balancing playtime elsewhere. However, these three players saw more snaps than they should have in 2018. When it comes to the safeties in particular, being thrown in the fire like that can shake your confidence. We will need all three of these guys to stay healthy next season. Let’s hope they don’t get overworked in 2019.