Cornerback
Some of the fans that I have chatted with recently have an absurd amount of confidence in Pittsburgh’s cornerback room at the moment. While it’s certainly possible that they could exceed expectations in 2021, I wouldn’t bank on this being a terrific positional group, and it’s very likely we see some issues in the secondary this year.
The Steelers lost both Steven Nelson and Mike Hilton this offseason and did almost nothing to replace them. Justin Layne was a player I really liked coming out of Michigan State in 2019, but he has shown almost nothing at this point. Meanwhile, fans point to former undrafted cornerback James Pierre as the answer, but he has just 27 career defensive snaps in the regular season, and that’s putting a lot of confidence in a very unproven player.
Pittsburgh needs more than just a stopgap at the position. Though we know their history when it comes to drafting cornerbacks, we can’t pretend like they don’t matter in today’s passing league. Let’s hope that the group they have is good enough to get by for now, but with an aging Joe Haden and questions about Cameron Sutton in a full-time role, they are going to want to improve this room in the 2022 NFL Draft.
Perhaps the Steelers are able to get some remarkable play out of a few of the aforementioned players and make these positions less of a need than what I think they will be. However, as of now, these are three major positional groups Pittsburgh is going to need to address in 2022.