The calendar has now flipped over to July and that means the Pittsburgh Steelers annual training camp will be getting underway in Latrobe later this month. As usual, we have several series planned to get you ready for this year’s training camp and mine will center around preview profiles of 50 players over the course of the next 25 days. Most of these profiles will be on players who were under contract with the team in 2016.
Up twentieth in this series is a 2017 preview profile of safety Sean Davis.
Intro: Davis’ 2016 rookie season went very well all things considered as the second-round draft pick out of Maryland took over as a starter at safety roughly midway through the year after first being asked to play some in the slot. Davis registered 70 total regular season tackles, 1.5 sacks and one interception to go along with five defensed passes. He was voted the team’s top rookie by the local press for his efforts.
Current Strengths: Plays best nearer to the line of scrimmage and especially against the run. Reads and diagnoses well for a young player. Not afraid to come up to hit. For a safety, moves very well in space and especially when coming forward. He blitzes well off the edge and now just needs to finish his shots at quarterbacks.
Current Weaknesses: First and foremost, Davis must become a more reliable tackler moving forward and this is something he has struggled with dating back to college career. He also needs to do a better job of mirroring and jamming wide receivers off the line when asked to play some in the slot moving forward.
2017 Outlook: 2016 served as a great learning season for Davis and now that he should be a lot more conformable with the defense, he’ll be expected to make a lot more splash plays as a safety. Total tackles for safeties is a deceiving stat and thus the hope is that most of his in 2017 happen very close to the line of scrimmage. He missed a few sack opportunities last season and hopefully he can add a few more in that stat column in his second season.
2017 Base Salary: $635,771
2017 Salary Cap Charge: $928,856
2017 Health Status: Underwent offseason shoulder surgery but expected to be ready for start of regular season
2016 Health Status: Zero games missed last season due to injury but did battle a shoulder problem
2016 Regular Season Snaps Played: 740 of 1,046
2016 Stat That Matters: 11 of 33 total run tackles came within 3 or less yards from the line of scrimmage
2016 Stats:
| G | Comb | Total | Ast | Sck | SFTY | PDef | Int | Yds | TDs | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 | 70 | 55 | 15 | 1.5 | — | 5 | 1 | 0 | — | 0 |
2016 Highlights:
