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: LG Isaac Seumalo
Stock Value: Down
Reasoning: The prized free agent signee did not debut well for his new team, the Steelers, struggling to find his footing in all aspects of the game. While not uniformly poor by any means, it certainly was not the level of performance the team is paying for.
The Steelers traded away their starting left guard from last season a couple of weeks back in a chain reaction from their decision to sign veteran Isaac Seumalo. His acquisition immediately displaced Kevin Dotson, who suddenly became an overly expensive backup lacking position flexibility.
That’s not to say that they should suddenly regret it, but the man who displaced him from the starting lineup didn’t exactly show out in his debut as a member of the Pittsburgh Steelers. It was a fairly rough outing, though not necessarily one full of standout poor moments.
Now, let’s go no further without addressing the fact that Seumalo had no easy task going against an incredibly stout San Francisco 49ers defensive interior. He had to contend with Arik Armstead and Javon Hargrave all day, with the specter of Nick Bosa lurking around the corner as well here and there.
But to say that he held his own would be generous. While he did not give up a significant number of pressures—I don’t believe any of his specific losses even led to a quarterback hit—the fact is that he lost a higher percentage of his reps than you would like to see.
The Steelers didn’t run the ball very much—only nine designed runs in total—so that’s too hard to judge, and accordingly, I’m not going to comment on it much further. Some might point out his failure to get to the second level to account for Fred Warner on the Steelers’ first running play of the game that dropped Najee Harris for a two-yard loss, but it’s hard to say definitively what his assignment was.
The bottom line is that this should be the worst game of his Steelers career. I’m not saying that he can never allow a sack, but in terms of the number of plays on which he did not win his rep or execute his assignment successfully, that needs to improve in a hurry.
