Now that the 2021 season is over, bringing yet another year of disappointment, a fifth consecutive season with no postseason victories, it’s time to take stock of where the Pittsburgh Steelers stand. Specifically, where Steelers players stand individually based on what we have seen and are seeing over the course of the season and into the offseason as it plays out. We will also be reviewing players based on their previous season and their prospects for the future. A stock evaluation can take a couple of different approaches and I’ll try to make clear my reasoning. In some cases, it will be based on more long-term trends. In other instances, it will be a direct response to something that just happened. Because of this, we can and will see a player more than once over the course of the season as we move forward.
Player: WR Steven Sims
Stock Value: Down
Reasoning: With the Steelers picking up veteran wide receiver Miles Boykin off of waivers, that will make it a more complicated process for a player like Steven Sims to make the 53-man roster later this year.
It’s not easy to rebuild a position group when you lose three players all in the same offseason, but that’s what the Steelers are looking to do this year with the wide receiver. Although they still retain their top two players, Diontae Johnson and Chase Claypool, the losses of JuJu Smith-Schuster, James Washington, and Ray-Ray McCloud left them with precious little in the way of solid depth.
The two names that stuck out for people were Steven Sims and Anthony Miller, two veteran wide receivers with valuable in-game NFL experience, both of whom spent the majority of the year on Pittsburgh’s practice squad. The assumption was that at least one of them would be able to make the jump to the 53-man roster.
With the signing of Gunner Olszewski and now the acquisition of Miles Boykin, that path is a more difficult one. It’s not even a guarantee that Boykin will make the 53-man roster himself this summer, but he should be inside the bubble for the time being.
Pittsburgh is assured to draft a wide receiver next week, if not two. Assuming that they add one, then the depth chart could look like this: Johnson, Claypool, Boykin, Olszewski, TBD Rookie. That could be the group that they go into the 2022 season with.
And if that’s the case, that would mean that Sims (and Miller as well) are on the outside looking in. Although the Steelers saw enough in both of them not only to keep them around during the season but to retain them this offseason, the reality is that they never impressed enough that they felt they deserved to be promoted to the 53-man roster, while Cody White was their number five receiver. That in itself is somewhat telling.
