Player: WR Roman Wilson
Stock Value: Down
Reasoning: Rookie WR Roman Wilson will have completed the first half(ish) of his rookie season having played a whopping five snaps. The third-round pick has only dressed for one game, running one route and garnering zero targets. He must catch up to the moving train, but is currently riding the rails wearing an anchor, it seems.
The first few days of training camp were exciting for rookie WR Roman Wilson. He was starting to turn some heads in the early going, but then the turned his ankle. That injury has completely derailed his rookie season, and it’s easy to wonder if he can get back on track.
Since injuring his ankle on the fourth day of camp, Roman Wilson has not done much. He missed the rest of training camp and all of the preseason, only beginning to practice leading up to the start of the regular season.
Even then, he spent the first few weeks of the year practicing on a limited basis, if at all. He had only gotten healthy for a few weeks, but the Steelers still did not dress him. Finally, Wilson played dressed for one single game, playing five snaps. Four of those snaps consisted of run blocking.
Then following his NFL debut, he injured his hamstring late that week in practice. He missed the next game, and now he will miss tonight’s game after failing to practice at all. What does that mean for the rest of Wilson’s rookie season?
It’s possible that Mike Tomlin was opting to be extra cautious, wanting to give Roman Wilson the chance to go into the bye week as healthy as possible. He knows they can use another receiver in the second half of the year, and he is their only option. If not him, then they have only a week left to trade for one.
Of course, there are still more than two months to go in the 2024 season. Roman Wilson will be healthy enough to play by the end of the year. He still has a chance to make some kind of impact before his rookie season is over, but he needs to return to practice and health as soon as possible.
As the season progresses, Steelers players’ stocks rise and fall. The nature of the evaluation differs with the time of year, with in-season considerations being more often short-term. Considerations in the offseason often have broader implications, particularly when players lose their jobs, or the team signs someone. This time of year is full of transactions, whether minor or major.
A bad game, a new contract, an injury, a promotion—any number of things affect a player’s value. Think of it as a stock on the market, based on speculation. You’ll feel better about a player after a good game, or worse after a bad one. Some stock updates are minor, while others are likely to be quite drastic, so bear in mind the degree. I’ll do my best to explain the nature of that in the reasoning section of each column.
