Steelers 2020 season will rise or fall on these 5 players

The Steelers need this Safety to play up to his first-round billing

When the Steelers drafted Terrell Edmunds, Safety out of Virginia Tech, in the first round of the 2018 NFL draft, my initial reaction was one of dismay and disbelief.  I thought we were going to draft another position, but since Kevin Colbert did not ask me my opinion, I had to accept the selection.

In two seasons, Edmunds has managed to defend 7 passes and has 1 INT on his ledger.  For a first-round pick, I would say that production is pretty underwhelming.  Now, I obviously don’t know what the defensive calls are from game to game, so I don’t know what Edmunds is being asked to do or not to do, but I can tell one thing he is definitely not doing very well.

According to Pro-Football-Reference, in 2019, Edmunds was targeting 50 times by opposing QBs.  He surrendered a whopping 36 completions.  That is an astonishingly terrible completion percentage of 72%.  Again, I don’t know if we thought that Edmunds would be better in coverage than he has been or we thought that aspect of his game would develop.

Regardless of what the Steelers thought when we drafted him, he has not played up to his first-round billing, but he needs to this season for the defense to go from a really good defense to Super Bowl-caliber defense.  If you watched his play last season, you know why I say that he has not lived up to his draft slot.

Look, I really hope Edmunds can become the player the Steelers thought we were getting when we drafted him in the first round, but, thus far, he has been a disappointment. To his credit, he is durable.  Edmunds has not missed a game in two seasons; however, durability may not be enough.

Let’s now look at the final player on our list.