The Pittsburgh Steelers ended the 2019 season much as they did the 2018 season, by allowing their playoff fate slip out of their grasp. Slow starts and slow finishes permeated both campaigns, with strong runs in between. But while the results were the same missing the playoffs, the means were quite different.
Yet again, they find themselves undergoing the exit meeting process earlier than anticipated, which means so are we. But that they still managed to go 8-8 without Ben Roethlisberger, and with the general quality of play that they faced along the way, I suppose things could have been worse.
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 2018 season.
Player: Ryan Switzer
Position: Wide Receiver
Experience: 3 Years
For some reason it seems a bit difficult to believe that Ryan Switzer has only been in the NFL for three seasons, and he has only been with the Steelers since August of 2018. It feels to me as though he has been here longer than that, and yet, frankly, he hasn’t exactly done a whole lot even with the time that he has been here.
A former fourth-round pick of the Dallas Cowboys in 2017, he was hardly used as a rookie. They traded him to the Oakland Raiders the following offseason, who would turn around and trade him to the Steelers several months later.
Switzer made the team, originally talking about him coming in to be their return man, and he did serve in that role up until his injury that ended his 2019 season. But that would come to be his primary role. He caught 36 passes for 253 yards and a touchdown in 2018, but he would catch just eight for 27 yards last year.
Notably, he played just 81 snaps on offense over nine games last season. This was in spite of the fact that they were forced to trade Antonio Brown, and the player they signed in free agency, Donte Moncrief, proved to be a bust.
His only real new competition was rookie Diontae Johnson, a third-round pick out of Toledo, but it wasn’t long before the Rocket was playing ahead of him. Johnson would ultimately catch 59 passes for 680 yards and five touchdowns, thus blowing away Switzer’s career numbers.
After Switzer’s injury, Johnson also took over the punt return job and returned one for a touchdown. While he is still on the roster, it does look as though he will have a difficult time making the roster if the Steelers address the wide receiver position in any way this offseason, and they are fully expected to do so.
