3 biggest weaknesses on the Steelers heading into the 2020 season

Backup safety

The Steelers have one of the best young safeties in the league in All-Pro Minkah Fitzpatrick, and while I wasn’t too keen on Pittsburgh spending a first-round pick on Terrell Edmunds in 2018, he still has a chance to prove his worth on this defense.

However, outside of quarterback, the Steelers may not have worse depth to a position on the team than they do at safety. Jordan Dangerfield is the only experienced backup of the group. But even he played just 205 defensive snaps since 2016 – most of them coming four years ago. In addition, there’s no guarantee that Dangerfield is even the first safety off the bench or that he will carve out a defensive role this year.

Marcus Allen is a player that has drawn some buzz this offseason for some of the work he did in training camp, but let’s not be so quick to forget how gut-wrenchingly bad his preseason performance was last year. His tackling was poor and his angles made you want to pull your hair out. If he’s called upon, Allen will need to take a massive step forward.

The only thing Pittsburgh really did to improve the safety position this offseason was spending a late-round pick on Maryland safety, Antoine Brooks Jr. Brooks was primarily a box safety during his time in college, and he will likely only be a special teams contributor if he makes the roster in year one if he earns a hat on game day.

While these positions could prove to be better than I’m giving them credit for in 2020, they certainly look concerning on paper. Let’s hope there’s a good reason why the Steelers ignored these positions this offseason.