Now that the 2019 season is over, with a team other than ours having been crowned champion and there being much work to do to return to that status, it’s time to take stock of where the Pittsburgh Steelers stand. Specifically where Steelers players stand individually based on what we have seen happen over the course of the past season, and with notice to anything that happens going forward.
A stock evaluation can take a couple of different approaches and I’ll try to make clear my reasonings. In some cases it will be based on more long-term trends, such as an accumulation of offseason activity. In other instances it will be a direct response to something that just happened. So we can see a player more than once over the course of the summer as we move forward.
Player: S Jordan Dangerfield
Stock Value: Even
This is an interesting one to consider. Jordan Dangerfield has played a lot of snaps on special teams, but he seems to be entrenched on the bottom of the depth chart at safety, even though, several years back (in 2016?), the team trusted him enough to start two games.
Now with three accrued seasons, Dangerfield is going to be a restricted free agent, but it would cost over $2 million to place even the original-round restricted free agent tender on him, with not compensation. As they did with Terence Garvin several years ago, expect them not to tender him, which would result in him becoming an unrestricted free agent.
In Garvin’s case, he ended up signing, if I recall, a multi-year deal in free agency, and he carved out a nice little career for himself. He was one of the top players in the AAF and appears to be doing well in the XFL now, but it doesn’t seem as though there is a ton of interest in him from NFL teams to be brought back.
As for Dangerfield, it’s important to remember that he’s already 29 years old. He’s actually been with the Steelers since 2014. That’s long than—well, most of the players on the roster. Like…he’s been in Pittsburgh since before Alejandro Villanueva was signed to the practice squad. Think about that.
I had a hard time considering how to evaluate his stock, honestly. Safety depth is weak, but that also guarantees that they’re going to address the position. In some ways, it seems as though Marcus Allen might be considered ahead of him if they feel he can play on defense.
In 2018, the team wiped the entire position clean aside from Dangerfield and Sean Davis, signing two safeties in free agency and then drafting two. It’s not too much of a wild idea to suggest that they may sign a cheap free agent and then draft a safety this year, so it wouldn’t shock me if 2019 was Dangerfield’s last year in Pittsburgh.
