The latest signee to the Pittsburgh Steelers roster is RB Jonathan Ward. He was with the team at rookie minicamp on a tryout basis, but he has been in the league since 2020 when he signed as an undrafted free agent with the Arizona Cardinals. He spent two and a half seasons with the Cardinals, and then spent the last season and a half with the Tennessee Titans with a brief stint in 2022 on the New York Jets’ offseason roster.
He hasn’t played a ton of snaps in the NFL. He has logged 62 snaps as a running back, two as a wide receiver, and six in the slot. His experience has mostly come on special teams, where he has logged 192 snaps in kick coverage, 183 on kick returns, 67 in punt coverage, and 111 on punt returns.
He doesn’t have a large enough body of work to fully evaluate from game tape, but we will split things up between offense and special teams and take a look at his tape. Snap count totals are courtesy of Pro Football Focus.
Offense
| RB | Wide | Slot | |
| 2020 | 3 | 0 | 1 |
| 2021 | 40 | 1 | 5 |
| 2022 | 9 | 1 | 0 |
| 2023 | 10 | 0 | 0 |
| TOTAL: | 62 | 2 | 6 |
Jonathan Ward is pretty elusive with the ball in his hands. Not so much in the open field with cuts and change of direction, but he is good at not taking big hits. He spins out of contact well and tends to fall forward. Though he is good at evading the big hit, his contact balance is inconsistent, and he gets tripped up by arm tackles. The top-end speed is okay, not great, but he gets up to his top speed in a hurry and that works well for him to run outside the tackles.
In between the tackles, he isn’t going to push the pile, but if he finds a seam he is pretty good at navigating through traffic. On the first touch of his career, he scored a touchdown.
And here is a four-play drive with Ward getting the ball on four running plays. The third play shows his speed to get all the way around the defense and up the sideline.
Special Teams
| Kick Coverage | Kick Return | Punt Coverage | Punt Return | |
| 2020 | 75 | 53 | 0 | 45 |
| 2021 | 69 | 56 | 40 | 36 |
| 2022 | 28 | 32 | 11 | 17 |
| 2023 | 20 | 42 | 16 | 13 |
| TOTAL: | 192 | 183 | 67 | 111 |
Ward has returned two kickoffs in his career for an average of 20.5 yards. I could actually see him getting some reps here with the Steelers this offseason, especially with the new kickoff rules. He gets up to speed quickly and navigates traffic well.
Here he is on a fake punt with the ball directly snapped to the upback and passed to Ward up the middle of the field. He made a crazy catch off the defender’s helmet.
To make the team as the RB4, he is going to need to be versatile on special teams. I think he is capable of that. Here is Ward on kick coverage making a tackle. He takes on a block, flows toward the ball, sheds and lays out his body to make the tackle.
