The 2020 NFL Draft is drawing near, which seems to be a fitting time to take a look back at the rookie seasons of the Pittsburgh Steelers class from the 2019 NFL Draft. People start talking about the quality of a draft class before said class is even completed, of course, but now we have a year of data to work from.
Over the course of the next several days, I will be providing an overview of the team’s rookies, as well as an evaluation of each rookie that the Steelers drafted, while also noting any undrafted free agents that were able to stick around. This will not include the likes of Robert Spillane and Tevin Jones because they were first-year players, not rookies.
The Steelers went into the 2018 NFL Draft with 10 selections, including two in the third round and three in the sixth, but ended up trading their second-round pick to move up in the first round. They received additional third- and fifth-round picks for trading Antonio Brown, a sixth for Marcus Gilbert, and the other sixth was part of the Ryan Switzer trade the year before.
Continuing a recent trend, the class has proven to be top-heavy in terms of early results, though there are still opportunities for those selected by them in the later rounds of the draft to develop into bigger contributors as well.
Player: Alexander Myres
Position: CB
Draft Status: Undrafted
Snaps: 0
Starts: 0 (0 games)
Does the name Alexander Myres ring a bell? Well, it might not. The Houston product was originally signed by the Steelers as an undrafted free agent last year. A decent-sized zone-cover cornerback who could play inside and outside, he was seen as a possible practice squad candidate.
That evaluation would have seemed to have been thrown off after he was waived at the end of July with a non-football illness designation. He never disclosed what they illness was, but the Steelers did eventually bring him back, signing him to the practice squad a couple of weeks into the season, opting for him over another cornerback who was on the practice squad, Trevon Mathis.
Long story short, Myres would stick to the practice squad for the rest of the season, and he was retained on a futures deal, so the Steelers still have some level of interest in him. The team gave him a $20,000 signing bonus after the draft when he signed, which was the largest signing bonus that they gave to any of their undrafted additions.
Things are not really breaking his way, though. After missing training camp due to illness in his rookie season, he is now seeing his second offseason curtailed because of the current pandemic. That is going to make it that much harder for players like him to make any kind of headway.
