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: S Terrell Edmunds
Stock Value: Sold
Reasoning: The former first-round draft pick found a new home in free agency, signing a rather modest one-year contract with the Philadelphia Eagles. It is not clear how much interest the Steelers had in re-signing him. They have reportedly re-signed Damontae Kazee to a two-year, $6 million deal, though it has not yet been made official, even if head coach Mike Tomlin acknowledged it yesterday.
With five-year starter Terrell Edmunds signing elsewhere in free agency this offseason, he joins a growing list of Steelers first-round draft picks who have failed to sign multi-year extensions or new deals with the organization after playing out their rookie contract — often without having their fifth-year option picked up.
Since drafting David DeCastro in the first round in 2012, Pittsburgh’s success with quality and longevity in the first round has left much to be desired. Outside linebacker Jarvis Jones (2013), cornerback Artie Burns (2016), and inside linebacker Devin Bush (2019) all lasted only their rookie contracts with no fifth-year option.
First-round pick Bud Dupree (2015) lasted six seasons, playing out his rookie contract with the fifth-year option and then having one year under the franchise tag. He left in free agency after signing a five-year, $82.5 million contract, so his was a matter of pricing himself out of Pittsburgh.
Ryan Shazier, their first-round 2014 selection, was obviously a special case. He was certainly their best first-round pick not named T.J. Watt in the past decade, but a career-ending injury prevented him from longevity and resulted in the Steelers flailing with Bush.
Then there’s Edmunds, the 2018 first-round pick. He played out his rookie contract without his fifth-year option being picked up, then played under a Four-Year Player Veteran Benefit contract last season that allowed the team to pay him a bit over $2.5 million with a much smaller cap hit.
And they did not re-sign him until shortly before the draft. For the second straight offseason, they allowed him to test the waters to see what he could find. After a year many regarded as his best, he found a buyer that seemed to fit him, even if the deal he signed—reportedly worth under $3 million even with incentives—leaves one to wonder why Pittsburgh wouldn’t have re-signed him for that amount.
They did re-sign Damontae Kazee on a reported two-year, $6 million contract, but will he take Edmunds’ place in the starting lineup? There seems to be a healthy degree of skepticism about that.
