The Pittsburgh Steelers find that their 2016 season ended a bit prematurely, and are undergoing the exit meeting process a couple weeks sooner than they would have liked. Never the less, what must be done must be done, and we are now at the time of the year where we close the book on one season and look ahead to the next.
While we might not know all the details about what goes on between Head Coach Mike Tomlin and his players during these exit meetings, we do know how we would conduct those meetings if they were let up to us. So here are the Depot’s exit meetings for the Steelers’ roster following the 2016 season.
Player: Cody Wallace
Position: Center/Guard
Experience: 7 Years
Originally a fourth-round draft pick by the 49ers in 2008, Wallace has missed out on a couple of accrued seasons in the interim because he spent much of the early part of his career on practice squads, even bouncing around from team to team. In fact, more than half of his accrued experience has some since the Steelers claimed him off waivers after final cuts in 2013.
Even more stark is the fact that by far the vast majority of his playing time has come since then. As a 2008 draft pick, Wallace only saw less than a couple dozen snaps throughout his entire playing career on offense from then through the 2012 season. He has probably played not too far from 2000 snaps since then, including the entirety of the 2015 season.
But he didn’t play at all during the 2016 season after he suffered what was originally reported as a hyperextended knee during the preseason. I don’t believe that the injury was ever really elaborated upon, but he never got healthy enough to return to play, and by that point the Steelers had more or less moved on.
You might not recall this, but Wallace actually did spend the first half of the season on the Steelers’ 53-man roster. It was only during the period of their bye week following the first seven games that they shifted him to the injured reserve list.
The odds are that Wallace has played his last snap for the Steelers. He will turn 33 at the end of November this year and is coming off a knee injury. Even more important than that is the fact that the team likes B.J. Finney quite a bit.
All things considered, the team got their contract’s worth and then some out of Wallace’s three-year deal that he signed following his first season with the team in 2013, during which he had to start the final several games due to multiple injuries at center.
The veteran lineman had more success when he was able to play center than guard. Perhaps that is to be taken into consideration when evaluating his potential value going forward, if he is largely limited to one position. At this point, there is no reason to believe that the Steelers will re-sign him, although a veteran-minimum deal with no guarantees if he is still available late in the market would not surprise.
