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: RB Jaylen Warren
Stock Value: Up
Reasoning: While he enters his second season probably feeling that he has more to prove than he actually does, that should only be a good thing for running back Jaylen Warren. With a year’s worth of experience under his belt and added muscle to boot, he is very much looking like a player ready to make a second-year jump.
It’s important for every team every so often to find a proverbial diamond in the rough among college free agent players. The Pittsburgh Steelers are hoping to find another one this year, but they already have second-year running back Jaylen Warren, who as an undrafted rookie in 2022 managed to make an impact.
Already praised by coaches who talked about how they wanted to find ways to get him on the field more, Warren will still have to work behind Najee Harris as the lead back, but he is gearing up for a strong second season.
The most important thing he brings along with him is the experience of what an NFL season is like. He’s taken that proverbial lap around the track, as head coach Mike Tomlin refers to it. That’s given him the perspective of knowing what to expect, and thus knowing how to prepare for it.
He’s added some more muscle this offseason, with any number of reporters commenting on the improvements in his physique. He was already listed at 215 pounds, however, which is a load considering he’s only 5’8”. But it’s about distributing that mass.
Warren continues to talk about feeling as though he hasn’t proven anything yet, and that can only be a good thing. He has already established himself as an NFL-level running back, but like Alex Highsmith, he seems to have a mentality that is impervious to complacency.
All that’s really on the table for him is to continue to grow and to get better at what he already does well, which is a little bit of everything. He took on more as a rookie than he probably even expected, but now he knows what he’s in for.
