The Pittsburgh Steelers have listed undrafted rookie CB Beanie Bishop Jr. as their starting slot corner on all three of the preseason depth charts. After Josiah Scott was waived early in training camp and Grayland Arnold landed on IR with a subsequent release, things seemed to line up for Bishop to take control of the starting job for Week 1.
He ended up missing the second preseason game with an injury, and then Mike Tomlin limited him in practice this week to make sure he could get some preseason game reps, which are more important for evaluation. The only issue is, Bishop didn’t enter the game on defense until the second half. Thomas Graham Jr. was the starting slot corner today in Detroit.
Tomlin explained Bishop’s late entrance to the game after the Steelers’ 24-17 loss to the Lions.
“He hadn’t worked a lot and you gotta earn the opportunity. Glad that he’s healthy. We wanted to give him an opportunity, but when you go in the game, oftentimes it’s kind of reflective of the work that you do leading up to performance,” Tomlin said during his postgame press conference in a video posted on the team YouTube page. “And to be quite honest with you, he’s had limited availability, so he wasn’t deserving of those reps that you spoke of.”
Even with Bishop running with the first-team defense most of training camp and his presence on the depth chart, Tomlin has repeatedly cautioned the media not to overanalyze his involvement. Tomlin was asked this week if Bishop has shown enough when healthy, to which he replied, “Absolutely not.”
Graham is his main competition, at least until Week 10 when Cameron Sutton is able to return from suspension to the starting slot corner role. But really, Graham and Bishop were both competing against the field. Teryl Austin more or less said whoever shows up healthy will get the job at this point because they have suffered so much attrition at the position. Chances seem high that the Steelers will add a slot corner after roster cutdowns in the days leading up to the start of the regular season.
Bishop finished the game with three total tackles, including two solo. We will break down both Graham and Bishop’s play in the coming days as we prepare for roster cutdowns on Tuesday. Tomlin said they won’t start announcing starters until after this week of practice as they continue to go Steelers on Steelers until the week leading up to the Falcons game.
