Pittsburgh Steelers player tier rankings following 2021 season
By Tommy Jaggi
The Pittsburgh Steelers got some terrific performances during the 2021 season. Here are my tier rankings of the top performances from this past year.
I’m not going to go as far to say that the Pittsburgh Steelers are scraping the barrel for talent, but they’ve certainly seen better days. After a disappointing 2021 season, there could be a lot of finger-pointing — and rightfully so. Both the game plan and the execution were lacking, and Pittsburgh paid the price with an embarrassing playoff loss against the Chiefs.
As objectively as possible, I’ve been evaluating the talent currently on the Steelers and comparing the players they have to other players at their positions around the NFL. Sadly, this current roster doesn’t have a lot to write home about.
While they have a few superstars, they’re lacking some cornerstone building blocks at some very important positions. Here are my tier rankings for the ten best players on the Steelers roster from the 2021 season:
Tier 4: Above NFL average
Steelers: Terrell Edmunds, Chirs Wormley, Alex Highsmith
Though I only have three players in the ‘above NFL average’ tier, my next tier might offer some encouragement for the future. However, I really feel like most of the roster falls short of qualifying for this.
Players like WR Chase Claypool, CB Joe Haden, OG Kevin Dotson, and CB Cameron Sutton all missed the cut, as I don’t feel they’ve played better than the majority of starters at their respective positions this year. Just three players cracked this tier: Terrell Edmunds, Chris Wormley, and Alex Highsmith.
While still not a flashy player, Edmunds is coming off the best season of his NFL career so far. Once thought of as a first-round bust, the strong safety is really starting to take shape to become a solid football player. Chris Wormley also had the best season of his career as a pass rusher — earning 7 sacks, 6 tackles for a loss, and 10 QB hits this year –while Highsmith shows plenty of promise as a quality edge defender.