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: TE Christian Scotland-Williamson
Position: TE
Experience: 0 Years
Everybody loves a project, don’t they? Well, Christian Scotland-Williamson is the Steelers’ project. A British rugby player, he has spent the past two seasons employed by Pittsburgh as he attempts not only to learn but to excel at the tight end position in the NFL.
While it’s not unique for rugby players to try out for football, even to find success, it still isn’t incredibly common, and I don’t think it would be entirely honest to suggest that Scotland-Williamson has made meaningful headway over the course of the past two months.
That is not entirely true, though. Our own Alex Kozora, for example, had positive reports to give on Scotland-Williamson during training camp last year with regard to the improvement of his blocking technique. Theoretically, he does have the physical build to be able to play the tight end position.
When he stepped into a stadium and actually got the opportunity to play under live fire, however, he often enough still looked like a rugby player, and you don’t want to look like a rugby player playing in an NFL game, because things often don’t end well.
The good thing for him is that it costs the Steelers nothing in terms of roster space to keep him around. As a player part of the International Pathway program, Pittsburgh is given an exemption for him both for the offseason 90-man roster and if they choose to carry him on the practice squad, though if they do the latter, they are not eligible to promote him to the 53-man roster during that season.
The Steelers did re-sign him to a futures contract for the third year in a row, so expect to continue to see him in the offseason—assuming that there is one. Any strides that he continues to make is great, and in the meantime, he earns himself a paycheck.
