The 2023 preseason schedule will really get ramped up this weekend as all 32 teams will be playing games. The Pittsburgh Steelers, of course, will play on Friday night and that will surely have our main attention for obvious reasons. As for the other 15 preseason games that will take place this weekend, the Steelers will have interest in a lot of, if not all of, those as they look to scout players who they might be interested in acquiring right ahead of Week One of the regular season.
On Wednesday, Steelers general manager Omar Khan was a guest on the Pat McAfee Show and during his interview he explained the preseason process when it comes to evaluating players not only the team he oversees, but other teams as well.
“Every single day we meet, and we evaluate who’s on everyone’s roster,” Khan said. “We study the waiver wire. You know, right now we have a list in place that we send scouts out to all the other games to evaluate the teams so we have an idea of who we would target once a cutdown happens, to see if they would improve our roster and all that. So, that process goes on daily.”
Annually, the Steelers can usually be counted on to add a few players to their roster that wind up on the 53-man unit right before the season starts. Sometimes those late offseason additions come via trades. Other times they come via waiver wire claims. In fact, just last year the Steelers acquired guard Jesse Davis and outside linebacker Malik Reed via trades on August 30.
In 2021, the Steelers traded for cornerback Ahkello Witherspoon on September and in 2020, quarterback Joshua Dobbs, safety Sean Davis, and punter Dustin Colquitt were all signed after being released by the respective teams they were with during the preseason.
How many outsiders will be added this year? We’ll see these next couple of weeks, but history says at least one more player not currently under contract will ultimately wind up on the Steelers’ 53-man roster that they take into Week One.
The Steelers first preseason opponent on Friday night will be the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Khan let it be known on Wednesday that they will certainly have a few eyes on a few players on that team.
“But we like to take a peek at the other team,” Khan said of the Buccaneers. “You know, we have an idea of maybe who’s going to come free from them. We all have to cut guys here in a couple weeks and we’ll be prepared.”
