The Pittsburgh Steelers are out of Latrobe and back at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex, also referred to as the South Side Facility. We are already into the regular season, where everything is magnified and, you know, actually counts. The team is working through the highs and lows and dramas that go through a typical Steelers season.
How are the rookies performing? What about the players that the team signed in free agency? Who is missing time with injuries, and when are they going to be back? What are the coaches saying about what they are going to do this season that might be different from how it was a year ago?
These are the sorts of questions among many others that we have been exploring on a daily basis and will continue to do so. Football has become a year-round pastime and there is always a question to be asked, though there is rarely a concrete answer, as I’ve learned in my years of doing this.
Question: What are Trey Edmunds’ odds of sticking to the Steelers’ 53-man roster in 2019?
Trey Edmunds, the eldest son of Ferrell Edmunds, was the first of the three brothers to make it to the NFL, signing with the New Orleans Saints in 2017 as a college free agent running back. His two younger brothers followed in the first round of the 2018 NFL Draft, Terrell Edmunds selected by the Steelers.
When the Saints cut Trey, the Steelers added him to their practice squad, but he was signed to the 53-man roster during the final quarter of the season after starting running back James Conner suffered a high ankle sprain that caused him to miss three games.
While he did not play on offense, he was an active contributor on special teams, and even when Conner returned for the season finale, he ended up being dressed over Stevan Ridley as the number three running back, along with Jaylen Samuels as the backups.
But most are expecting the Steelers to address the running back position in a meaningful way this offseason in terms of adding a more comfortable option as the number three behind Conner and Samuels. After all, they drafted Samuels last year in addition to re-signing Stevan Ridley even though they were still expecting to have Le’Veon Bell.
It hasn’t necessarily been uncommon for the team to carry four running backs, though it hasn’t happened out of the preseason since they began carrying Roosevelt Nix as a true fullback. Edmunds’s signing to the 53-man roster for the final four weeks of the 2018 season did mean that they carried four, but the odds of them entering the regular season with that number are low.
Still, we have seen the team fail to address areas of the roster that were viewed as needs plenty of times, such as at tight end in 2017 or inside linebacker a year ago.
