Minkah Fitzpatrick the lone Steelers player on NFL.com All-Under-25 Team

Pittsburgh has a lot of young talent, but here’s why Minkah Fitzpatrick was the lone Steelers player to make the NFL.com All-Under-25 Team.

The Steelers have always been one of the better drafting football teams under the direction of Kevin Colbert. Since joining Pittsburgh in 2000, he has been largely responsible for drafting players like Troy Polamalu, Ben Roethlisberger, Heath Miller, Cameron Heyward, and David DeCastro.

Colbert isn’t without his share of misses in recent years. Jarvis Jones (2013) was considered one of Pittsburgh’s worst first-round busts in history, and Artie Burns (2016) didn’t turn out as planned. Fortunately, Bud Dupree (2015) recently proved his worth, but the Steelers are still waiting on Terrell Edmunds (2018) to live up to his first-round status.

Even with some questionable picks as of late, Colbert has still found a way to bring in excellent young talent. T.J. Watt, JuJu Smith-Schuster, and James Conner were all members of an incredibly talented 2017 draft class. Unfortunately, none of them made NFL.com’s most recent list.

Marc Sessler recently put together a list of his top 25 players under the age of 25. Just one Steeler made the cut: Minkah Fitzpatrick.

It’s not hard to see why Fitzpatrick made the list. After being traded to Pittsburgh after Week 2 of the 2019 season, Minkah did nothing but impress as he took the ball away a whopping 8 times (5 interceptions, 3 fumble recoveries) and managed to score two defensive touchdowns.

Though Fitzpatrick had just one of those takeaways in the last seven games of 2019, it’s because he was hardly targeted in the second half of the season.

In case you were wondering, T.J. Watt is already 25 years old and doesn’t qualify for this list anymore. JuJu Smith-Schuster didn’t make the cut as Chris Godwin and Cortland Sutton were the receivers on Sessler’s list.

Jamal Adams ended up making the list alongside Minkah after both safeties earned All-Pro honors for their performances in 2019. In addition, Sessler added a ‘flex’ spot in which he had fellow safety, Derwin James, making the list.

Devin Bush, JuJu Smith-Schuster, and Diontae Johnson are all players who will have an opportunity to make this list in the future. All three Steelers have shown a lot of promise early in their NFL careers and have the potential to be among the better players in the league at their position if all goes according to plan.

Regardless of having just one representative on the list, we know that the Steelers have a number of young, talented players who could take a step forward in 2020. Let’s hope that they could have more players make this list after this season.