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: Trent Scott
Stock Value: Even
Reasoning: The veteran offensive lineman served as the Steelers’ swing tackle last season and also served occasionally as an extra lineman. His relationship with offensive line coach Pat Meyer makes it likely that there will continue to be a job for him in Pittsburgh.
Trent Scott has never played a season over the course of his career, in spite of the fact that he has been with three different teams, without Pat Meyer as his position coach. He spent his first two seasons with the Chargers before following Meyer to Carolina for two years. Now the two are in Pittsburgh.
He did start 19 games for Meyer between Los Angeles and Carolina, including nine games during the 2019 season and five in 2021, though he has been primarily a reserve throughout his career. And he wasn’t signed last season to be anything other than that.
With Dan Moore Jr. and Chukwuma Okorafor combining to miss all of one snap on the season, there wasn’t a lot of work for Scott to do in 2022, but he still managed to play 31 snaps on offense, 30 of which came in the capacity of the ‘tackle-eligible’, an extra blocker on the field.
And he did okay in that role, even though it’s not one that he had been asked to play much in his career. He did it a little bit during his time with the Chargers, but the Panthers did not really ask him to do that. The Steelers have a bit more of a history of using that role, however, since Todd Haley came in as offensive coordinator in 2012.
The inescapable truth, however, is that you don’t want Scott to be one snap away from starting. He would be better served if he can play that eighth lineman role (he is capable of playing either tackle or guard as well, which helps).
Considering the fact that he should be rather cheap, perhaps only netting the veteran minimum, I would imagine the team will re-sign him and bring him to camp. Depending on how they address the offensive line depth over the course of the next couple of months, we will see how much room there is for him.
