The Pittsburgh Steelers have had a revolving door at inside linebacker for the better part of the past decade now, including the 2023 offseason. They let their top four players at the position from last season walk and replaced them in various ways, including signing two starters in free agency in Cole Holcomb and Elandon Roberts.
While the latter is more established, the former has a higher ceiling. An athletic, sideline-to-sideline tackler, Holcomb is a player many should be interested in seeing within the context of Pittsburgh’s defense if he can manage to stay healthy.
That includes, perhaps, Gerry Dulac of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, who recently said that he believes Holcomb “has a chance to be most underrated” of the Steelers’ free agent signings, of which there were many this year. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean the best, but perhaps the most bang for your buck, so to speak, production relative to expectations.
Dulac is more reserved when it comes to Roberts, the 29-year-old veteran who is more of a two-down linebacker. While he signed with the Steelers on a two-year contract, Dulac writes that he thinks the Steelers “are viewing Roberts as a one-year player”.
Now, I know that the running joke is that if Dulac writes something, the opposite is going to be true, but what he believes here isn’t unreasonable. After all, there has been a ton of turnover at the inside linebacker position for years now, with many two-year deals being cut in half.
If the Steelers decide to cut Roberts in 2024, during which season he would be making $3.5 million in base salary with a $4.67 million cap hit, he would merely join a growing list including Jon Bostic, Mark Barron, and most recently, Myles Jack, who signed a two-year deal in 2022 worth $16 million. This doesn’t even include other one-year rentals like Joe Schobert and Avery Williamson.
As for Holcomb, he better fits the profile of Steelers free agents, players who are still potentially on the upswing of their careers, who either had injury issues or schematic issues that prevented them from accessing more of their full potential.
The former Washington Commanders fifth-round pick is going into year five now at age 26. While he missed most of last season, he racked up 69 tackles in just seven games. He accumulated 142 tackles in 16 games the year before. He also has three career interceptions, five forced fumbles, 4.5 sacks, and 15 tackles for loss, so he can do a little bit of everything.
And the Steelers are not going for broke to find out if they can get more out of Holcomb than the Commanders did. He only signed to a three-year, $18 million contract, of which he is only earning $6 million in 2023. They could cut him next year as well without much in the way of salary cap complications. But on a three-year deal, it does reflect perhaps a bit more confidence that he’ll be around longer.
