It wasn’t exactly news when the Pittsburgh Steelers announced that they had placed veteran safety DeShon Elliott on injured reserve. After a knee injury during the loss to the Packers, it was a well-known fact that Elliott was heading for a stint on IR.
However, Ian Rapoport’s news that Elliott is down for the foreseeable future, and possibly even the rest of the season, is certainly worth mentioning.
The #Steelers placed S DeShon Elliott and DT Daniel Ekuale on Injured Reserve. Ekuale tore his ACL and Elliott (knee) is out for the foreseeable future, likely the season, as well.
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) October 31, 2025
All this week, the Steelers made it seem like the injury wasn’t as bad as it appeared to be. We have no definitive timeline for his return. We knew it would be at least four weeks with him on injured reserve, and the expectation was for him to return to the team shortly after that.
Now, it looks like Elliott will be sidelined for the remainder of the season. If he does return, it will be a late-season return after a lot of the dust has settled with Pittsburgh’s season.
The Pittsburgh Steelers will be without one of their best defenders with DeShon Elliott sidelined
This certainly wasn’t news that the Steelers wanted to hear today.
The secondary has been a disappointing unit so far this season. While Elliott lacks the elite play of a top-end safety, he was a stabilizing force and a tone setter for the team.
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Without him, you are looking at the rag-tag group of Juan Thornhill, Chuck Clark, Kyle Dugger, and Jabril Peppers as your options in the back end. None of these players were in the black and gold a season ago, and Dugger was just recently acquired via trade.
In short, things in the secondary may get worse before they get better for a struggling unit. These four players will need to find some time to gel, and the team has to figure out who actually makes sense to start.
The other issue is that, besides Thornhill, the rest of the options are more strong safety/box safety. While you can mix and match to an extent, it feels like the Steelers are missing a true deep coverage safety right now.
It’s disappointing news across the board. It seemed like Elliott had a chance to miss only a month or so initially. Now, it looks like we would be lucky to have him back before the playoffs. For a secondary that has looked horrible in recent weeks, this isn’t the news you wanted to hear.