Now that the Pittsburgh Steelers’ 2023 season is getting underway after the team finished above .500 but failing to make the postseason last year, we turn our attention to the next chapter of Steelers football and everything that entails. One thing that it means is that some stock evaluations are going to start taking on more specific contexts as we get into the season, reflecting more immediate plusses and minus rather than trends over long periods. The nature of the evaluation, whether short-term or long-term, will be noted in the reasoning section below.
Player: ILB Cole Holcomb
Stock Value: Up
Reasoning: Along with the rest of the 90-man roster, ILB Cole Holcomb avoided starting training camp on the Physically Unable to Perform list, head coach Mike Tomlin expressing his confidence that everybody would be able to practice without limitations. He had been recovering from a foot injury this offseason that required surgery and was a limited participant during spring practices.
Cole Holcomb is the latest in a string of signings the Steelers have made in recent years in which they banked on an outside player, free agent or otherwise, successfully overcoming a significant injury to limited or no effect. Indeed, the inside linebacker isn’t even the only one who falls in that category in 2023. It also applies to WR Allen Robinson II.
Neither of them, however, will have to begin training camp on the Physically Unable to Perform (PUP) list. While Robinson initially held back in the first week of OTAs before ramping up to full participation, though, Holcomb never worked fully in the spring.
Some of that was likely out of an abundance of caution, wanting to minimize the risk of any setbacks with the goal of being as healthy as possible and ready to go during training camp. The plan seems to have worked, though we’ll find out for sure once he gets on the field and really tests out that foot.
The Steelers signed Holcomb as an unrestricted free agent from the Washington Commanders. He had a productive past two seasons when healthy, though his 2022 was greatly truncated due to the foot injury he suffered, which required surgery.
He is expected to be a starter, and likely the Steelers’ every-down linebacker with his sideline-to-sideline tackling range that has allowed him to accumulate more than nine tackles per game since the start of the 2021 season.
How he’ll look on the field we are going to have to find out, but at least now we can be reasonably confident that we will actually see him out there. There were some concerns that he would begin training camp on the PUP list, but that fear has proven to be unfounded.
