Now that the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 2022 season is over, the team finishing above .500 but failing to make the postseason, we turn our attention to the offseason and everything that means. One thing that it means is that some stock evaluations are going to start taking on broader contexts, reflecting on a player’s development, either positively or negatively, over the course of the season. Other evaluations will reflect only one immediate event or trend. The nature of the evaluation, whether short-term or long-term, will be noted in the reasoning section below.
Player: CB Arthur Maulet
Stock Value: Up
Reasoning: Though perhaps not substantially different from the previous season, Arthur Maulet continued to establish himself as a significant contributing partner in the defensive backfield during his second season in Pittsburgh in 2022.
Arthur Maulet first signed a simple one-year contract with the Steelers in 2021 as they searched for versatile depth in the secondary. They’d just lost one of their key contributors in that category in Mike Hilton. While Maulet hasn’t made many forget about Hilton, he has carved out his own role.
That led to the team re-signing him on a two-year contract last offseason, and he played nearly 500 defensive snaps for them in 2022, marking a new career high. In turn, he also put up some of the best statistical numbers in his career.
That included 59 tackles, of which a secondary-high 12 were against the run, and the bulk of them were run stops—that is, successful plays for the defense. On the other hand, he did miss too many tackles in this area, something he needs to improve upon.
Maulet also had a career-high two sacks and nabbed his first interception as a Steeler, the third of his career, which came in a key moment in that milestone Week 16 win over the Las Vegas Raiders. Trailing by seven, the Steelers head just turned it over themselves on Kenny Pickett’s lone post-bye interception. Maulet got it back the very next play.
Coverage is not Maulet’s strongest quality, and the Steelers tried to bear that in mind, but while he had his lapses, I thought his work in this area was better than it was the year before. They do seem to prefer to be able to use him more situationally, though, rather than as a full-time nickel who plays 70% of the snaps.
Already under contract, he will be back in 2023, but it will be interesting to see who joins him and how that impacts his role on defense. He is still a steady contributor on special teams either way, but the worst-case scenario is that he continues to provide valuable depth.
