With the Pittsburgh Steelers’ third-round pick at No. 98 overall in the 2024 NFL Draft, they selected NC State LB Payton Wilson. It has a similar feel to last year’s fourth overall selection with TE Darnell Washington falling well below where he was projected to go, mostly due to medical concerns. Both players had no issues during their final year in college, but there are long-term medical concerns.
Washington went on to log the third-most snaps of the Steelers’ rookie class, and he was the earliest rookie to contribute with the others ramping up over the course of the season. Wilson has a decent shot at following a similar arc in his rookie season.
During the Day-3 broadcast on the NFL Network, Bucky Brooks and Maurice Jones-Drew spoke about Wilson, and how great of value the Steelers got in the third round.
“Payton Wilson is an absolute stud, and I could’ve picked a number of guys from the Pittsburgh Steelers draft class and talked about being a sleeper, but this is the sleeper,” Brooks said. “The fact that he’s a third rounder to me, doesn’t speak to the talent that he brings and what he’s going to bring on the field if he’s healthy. This dude has instincts, awareness. He can rush the passer, he can play in coverage, he is always around the ball.”
Wilson himself told me at the Senior Bowl that if there are 90 snaps in a game, he wants to get 90 tackles. The guy doesn’t want to come off the field and has a knack for being a part of each play as he swarms to the ball with his 4.43 speed.
In his final year of college alone, Wilson had 138 total tackles, 69 solo tackles, 17.5 tackles for loss, six sacks, three interceptions, one forced fumble, two fumble recoveries, and one defensive touchdown. Over his career he had seven total interceptions and 15 total sacks. That is highly productive for a college career.
It is hard to call the 2023 Bednarik and Butkus Award winner a sleeper, but with him being drafted as the sixth off-ball linebacker off the board at the end of the third round, that is exactly what he has become.
In his scouting report, our Jonathan Heitritter wrote about Wilson’s knack for being near the football:
“The dude flies around the field like a heat-seeking missile to the football, having the speed and burst combined with the effort to chase down ball carriers with relative ease.”
Jones-Drew offered some further praise for Wilson.
“His speed jumps off on the tape. I mean, he’s running down receivers. He’s flying around. He’s blitzing off the right side, making the tackle at the left numbers,” Jones-Drew said. “Pittsburgh needs a guy that could play that Tampa Two, cover the middle of the field…That’s what they’ve been missing this whole time. This defense has been ready to really take off, they’ve just been missing that linebacker that’ll take away that hole shot.”
Between Patrick Queen and Wilson, and Cole Holcomb to a lesser degree once he returns from injury, the Steelers have three pretty athletic linebackers who are capable of doing things in coverage. Even Elandon Roberts showed that he could do that better than expected down the stretch of last season when he was one of the only healthy linebackers remaining.
The defense has a chance to be the best that it has been in years if everybody remains healthy, and Wilson will have a chance to be an instant contributor to the unit with all of the experience that he has. Great value in the third round if he can stay healthy, which he has for the last two seasons.
