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: OLB Alex Highsmith
Stock Value: Up
Reasoning: The fourth-year veteran is coming off arguably his best game of the season and one of the better games of his career. He finished last Thursday’s game against the Tennessee Titans with two sacks and five quarterback hits.
Alex Highsmith isn’t quite on the same pace for sacks as he was last season when he finished the year with 14.5 of them. He is still, however, flirting with double digits, and that’s a more than commendable figure, especially when you’re playing opposite a generationally elite pass rusher.
He has 4.5 sacks at the moment, of which two came in his most recent game. He took down Tennessee Titans rookie QB Will Levis twice in the second-round pick’s second career start. In doing so, he nearly doubled his sack total on the year, even though that is not an accurate reflection of how well he has been rushing the passer.
Games list this for a season of the nature that Highsmith is having are a valuable cleanser, helping to reset the discrepancy between the most forward-facing indicator of success and total performance. He has been excellent as a pass rusher throughout the 2023 season, but he wasn’t finishing enough of those plays by recording sacks. Getting two in one game largely serves an optical purpose in delivering a sack total that comes closer to accurately representing his overall success.
Not that many people care about those things, and that’s not to deny the immense value that a sack has. Highsmith knows. Nobody has been better than him at taking the ball out along with him over the past season and a half when he gets to the quarterback, and those are huge plays. He has two strip sacks this year.
Highsmith actually had another sack in the Tennessee game in the first quarter on third down, but a penalty on CB Joey Porter Jr. negated the play and gave the Titans a new set of downs. It likely didn’t alter the course of the possession as they were held to the field goal they were likely to get anyway, but it’s just another reminder that not everything shows up in the box score.
