The Pittsburgh Steelers signed S Jabrill Peppers after the season opener, a game in which DeShon Elliott was injured. Elliot aims for a Week 4 return, and the Steelers’ secondary already has a ton of new faces this season. The goal today is to see how Peppers has been utilized in his career.
I wrote a similar article a couple months ago: “How Will New Pieces Of The Secondary Fit.” I will reference that in this article.
Here is a visual of Peppers’ regular season position alignments in his career, broken down by free safety, box safety, slot cornerback and wide cornerback:
Clearly, we see that Peppers has been a very versatile piece in the secondary for the teams he’s played for to date. Free safety leads the way, with 1,804 career snaps, thanks to a couple seasons in particular. Namely as a rookie for Cleveland, along with 2023 as a Patriot.
His other six years were much more varied. Box snaps have been second most, 1,760 through his career, particularly with the Giants from 2019-20. The alignment also led his snap distribution in 2022 and 2024 for New England.
Peppers also has 902 slot snaps, where the Giants used him more, particularly in 2020, and led his snap counts in 2021. The least snaps at an alignment by far was wide cornerback, expectedly. For a safety, he has respectable snaps there, but Pittsburgh certainly addressed that position thoroughly this offseason.
Now that Peppers’ career position alignments have been laid out, here’s a table of Steelers top four safeties careers (pre-2025) to gain more context. I also included snaps of the four secondary positions, total snaps, number of seasons, and top alignment percentages (TOP PCT) by position:
This illustrates that DeShon Elliott and Juan Thornhill, Pittsburgh’s starters when healthy, have far more free/deep safety alignment over their careers. Jabrill Peppers and Chuck Clark have moved around the formation a lot. That experience could bode well to easing the pain of losing Elliott short term, who has played extremely well in the Black and Gold.
Elliott’s 2024 season was his first in Pittsburgh, and he played the most box snaps of his career when former Steeler Minkah Fitzpatrick was manning the back end. In the 2025 opener, Elliott’s box snaps continued to lead the way.
This amplifies why versatile players are attractive. Bringing in Peppers, who leads this group in all snap counts besides free safety (and total defensive snaps), is great to have in the room. Clark also brings versatility. It’s particularly encouraging to me that both have so much time in the box, which is the primary void that Elliott’s absence vacates.
The quantity is there, but only time will tell on the quality of play. In these terms, though, I’m rather encouraged that the veteran depth can step up and ease losing Elliott for some games. How about you?
