With the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 2022 season over, the team finishing above .500 but failing to make the postseason, we have turned our attention to the offseason. 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: ILB Myles Jack
Stock Value: Sold
Reasoning: The latest in the line of one-year starters at inside linebacker for the Steelers, Myles Jack signed a two-year, $16 million contract last season after being cut by the Jacksonville Jaguars. He was cut once again last week after the team signed his presumed replacement, Cole Holcomb.
As I’ve written about very recently, the Steelers have had a revolving door at inside linebacker since they lost the stabilizing presence of Ryan Shazier (and then later Vince Williams). Since then, they have primarily been bringing in free agents, signing them to two-year deals and then cutting them after one after they were not what they were cracked up to be.
Jack joins that group, which also includes Jon Bostic and Mark Barron, as well as other swings and misses via trade in Avery Williamson and Joe Schobert. Jack was the costliest at $8 million, and that is also likely why he is gone.
It wasn’t, after all, that he played poorly, though his bumps and bruises were not helpful to his cause. It’s just that what he offered the team last season was not worth $8 million. That included zero takeaways or sacks.
One wonders if things might have been different had he been able to have a healthier season. He only played in 70 percent or more of the snaps in any single game after the bye week one time, and that was in the 41 snaps he logged against the Atlanta Falcons.
During the first eight games of the season, Jack recorded 70 tackles, including two for loss, and two passes defensed, logging about 85 percent of the team’s defensive snaps during that time. He had just 34 tackles in seven games following the bye with one tackle for loss and one pass defensed. He played only 46 snaps in the final four games, including one game that he missed.
Jack wasn’t on the market long last year when the Jaguars let him go. It seems unlikely that he will fetch an offer similar to what the Steelers gave him a year ago at this rate. He has two forced fumbles and three interceptions in 103 career games.
