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 Gunner Olszewski
Stock Value: Sold
Reasoning: The Steelers announced the release of WR Gunner Olszewski late last week after about a year and a half of minimal positive contributions. Signed as a free agent primarily to be a return specialist, he had more muffs and fumbles than good returns.
That’s right, folks, it’s the article so many of you have been waiting for for a little over a year. The Pittsburgh Steelers released WR Gunner Olszewski coming out of their bye week during the 2023 season, the benefit of the doubt finally drying up.
The simple fact of the matter is that his career in Pittsburgh as a football player was awful. His best play was a catch last season on which he wasn’t the intended target, finding the ball on a ricochet in a nice head-up moment. Other than that, well, you go and try to find the highlights.
And that’s why he’s gone. That sounds obvious, and it’s a more than sufficient reason for a football player losing his job when he is doing it poorly. Yet it still feels worth pointing out when it comes to Olszewski, an individual whom everybody in the organization seemed to like and basically to hope for the best for.
And not without reason. He proved to be a good teammate and a dedicated, hardworking tryhard. You need a guy to throw passes to in the offseason? He’ll be there. That’s the sort of person he was in that building and in the organization.
And I think a large part of his struggles stem from him likely feeling the need to press, to try to make things happen once things got off on the wrong foot a year ago. Once you start pressing, you start making mistakes, overthinking, and just not doing your job.
Even the shockingly bad fair catch in the kickoff likely has a reasonable explanation. He was thrown out there in-game due to injury, and likely had the new touchback rules in mind. A brain fart ensued and he found himself toe-tapping a kick heading out of bounds. I would bet that intuitively he realized by the time he caught it that he did something stupid.
Yet I understand not everyone has much sympathy to give for a person who earned a couple million dollars for playing a game. He’ll dust himself off and be just fine, even if his ego might be a bit damaged. It’s hard to argue against their making the decision to cut him. He couldn’t be trusted on the field.
