Player: Jordan Dangerfield
Position: Safety
Experience: 4 Years
Free Agent Status: Unrestricted
2020 Salary Cap Hit: $825,000
2020 Season Breakdown:
What is there exactly to say about any of Jordan Dangerfield’s seasons? The Pittsburgh Steelers safety has been around long enough where we see the same story year after year. During the 2020 season, he continued where he left off, being a fixture on special teams while seeing very few opportunities to get on the field defensively, amounting to a total of 16 snaps, coming at the end of blowouts.
Dangerfield finished the season with 10 tackles, all of which came on special teams, and with led the Steelers in that category. Justin Layne finished second on the Steelers with eight tackles on special teams, while Ola Adeniyi had seven, and rookie cornerback James Pierre had six. I suppose it’s notable that three of their top four special teams tacklers were secondary members.
Beyond that, however, there isn’t much to note. As stated earlier, it is a continuation of what he had been doing. The most notably distinct aspect of the 2020 season for him is that he was named the Steelers’ special teams captain.
Free Agency Outlook:
This one is pretty open and shut. Jordan Dangerfield is not going to have a market. He will be re-signed for the veteran minimum that his experience of five seasons dictates, and he will return to serve primarily in the function of a core special teams player.
Do you realize that the 2021 season will mark nine years since Dangerfield came out of college from Towson? He originally signed with the Buffalo Bills, and he has been in and out of the Steelers organization since 2014. He was on the 53-man roster in 2016 before an injury conspired to leave him on the practice squad in 2017, but he has been a steady presence and fixture on special teams since 2018.
Now with four years of accrued experience, he is eligible to be an unrestricted free agent, but don’t expect him to garner the sort of attention that linebacker Tyler Matakevich got last year, even though he is primarily a special teams player. The Buffalo Bills did eye him as linebacker depth, and he played a career-high 72 defensive snaps for them (in addition to 321 special teams snaps). That won’t be the 31-year-old Dangerfield.
