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: WR Allen Robinson II
Stock Value: Up
Reasoning: The veteran wide receiver is very much looking the part so far during the first two days of the Steelers’ training camp at Saint Vincent College. He’s also looking like a wide receiver who has been starving to play with a decent passer for the past couple of years—which is true—and is now ready to feast.
I wrote about WR Calvin Austin III’s rough start to training camp yesterday. I have not and will not read the comments, because I’m confident that a lot of people overreacted to it one way or another. I’m happy to relay—which if you’re reading this you’re likely to already know—that the second-year man had a much better day yesterday, even hauling in a deep target.
But nobody had a better day than Allen Robinson II, the guy who will probably play the biggest role in keeping Austin on the sideline more frequently. Robinson came to the Steelers via trade early in the offseason to serve as the veteran presence in a young wide receiver room, and to fill in that big slot role they were trying to sandwich Chase Claypool into before trading him.
As Alex Kozora wrote last night, so far the Steelers are getting their money’s worth out of Robinson—and likely still would have even if they didn’t get a bargain deal to acquire him from the Los Angeles Rams, who were looking to dump his contract.
Not only did the 10th-year veteran find the end zone yesterday, which is one thing the team is very much hoping he brings to the table with his size, he also exhibited the depth and breadth of his repertoire generally, whether as a target or away from the ball.
So far so much of the discussion about Robinson coming to the Steelers has centered on his health and on his mentorship of younger wide receivers that fans want to watch blossom. Now they are getting to see what the old dog can still do on the field, both teaching and learning tricks along the way.
A handful of plays during the first two days of training camp shouldn’t be oversold, granted, but it’s nice to report the positivity coming from his actual play on the field after months of essentially talking around rather than about him.
