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: WR Calvin Austin III
Stock Value: Up
Reasoning: The second-year wide receiver appears to be looking back up to full speed, or something close to it, working on the field at OTAs. As a rookie, Austin suffered a season-ending foot injury the day before the first preseason game. Now he’s impressing former Pro Bowl cornerback Patrick Peterson with his burst.
I don’t know whether Calvin Austin III is back to 100 percent at this point, as in entirely past his 2022 foot injury and its subsequent surgery and rehab. If he is not, however, then he is far enough along to impress in shorts.
The diminutive wide receiver has apparently been showing off his greatest asset, which is his speed, since taking the field at OTAs these past two weeks. A fourth-round draft pick out of Memphis in 2022, Austin ran a 4.32 40-yard dash time, which was the third-best among wide receivers at the Combine that year.
Any time a player known for his speed is coming off a foot injury, you have to be concerned about what he is going to look like when he comes back from it. You might especially be worried about players with a smaller frame like Austin, who is quite literally my size and weighs less than me.
But at least so far, the early indications are positive. They’re not going to time him in the 40 right now, but his speed is being noticed, particularly by veteran cornerback Patrick Peterson. He is in his first season with the Steelers so he didn’t get a look at the wide receiver during his rookie offseason.
He said on his podcast with Bryant McFadden that he was caught off-guard by Austin’s speed, jokingly complaining that he’s an old man and they put the young speedster on him right away without any warmup or warning.
That’s about as much as we can hope to hear about Austin at this point before we get to training camp and things really start to matter. At this point, the only thing that is important is that he is healthy and will be ready to try to make the team and then make an impact on the field in September and beyond when the time comes.
