The Pittsburgh Steelers are now into the regular season, following the most unique offseason in the NFL since at least World War II. While it didn’t involve a player lockout, teams still did not have physical access to their players, though they were at least able to meet with them virtually.
Even training camp looked much different from the norm, and a big part of that was the fact that there will be no games along the way to prepare for. Their first football game of the year was to be the opener against the New York Giants.
As the season progresses, however, there will be a number of questions that arise on a daily basis, and we will do our best to try to raise attention to them as they come along, in an effort to both point them out and to create discussion
Questions like, how will the players who are in new positions this year going to perform? Will the rookies be able to contribute significantly? How will Ben Roethlisberger look—and the other quarterbacks as well? Now, we even have questions about whether or not players will be in quarantine.
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: Will Sean Davis start at strong safety if Terrell Edmunds is not ready to go on Monday against the Cincinnati Bengals?
To put it simply, Sean Davis has been little more than a special teamer this season for the Steelers, after being re-signed in September following his release in Washington. A former second-round pick who spent the majority of his first four seasons here as a starter or intended starter, he left in free agency coming off of an injury to compete for a starting job, but didn’t make the team.
Pittsburgh was quick to re-sign him to serve as depth behind Terrell Edmunds and Minkah Fitzpatrick, for whom they traded in week three last year after Davis suffered a season-ending injury, thereby ending his starting career.
Because he had played so extensively in the past, many assumed, including myself, that the Steelers still valued him as a player, and would want to get him on the field in different roles, perhaps even seeing time as a dime defender, but that never happened.
He has played just 14 snaps in total this year, the majority of that coming at the end of blowout games, or filling in for one snap here and there. Rookie Antoine Brooks has played 29 snaps in comparison, and even Jordan Dangerfield has 19.
But Davis has always been listed as the primary backup to both strong and free safety spots. If a starter misses a game, he is supposed to be the next man up. So would he finally get that opportunity if indeed Edmunds were to miss the first game of his career?
