Research: How Will New Items Of The Steelers Secondary Match?

The Pittsburgh Steelers’ secondary has undergone several changes this offseason, with key additions and a huge subtraction with the trade of safety Minkah Fitzpatrick. The goal of the article is to look at career snap alignments and see how the pieces could fit for 2025.

First, I will look at the newest Steelers, starting with CB Jalen Ramsey. He has a reputation for being versatile, though his skillset as a shutdown outside CB throughout his career has been atop that list.

Here’s a visual of his career position alignments, breaking those snaps down by wide cornerback, slot cornerback, box safety, and free safety:

This gives clear context to Ramsey’s usage over his nine-year career to date. The black bars represent wide cornerback snaps, illustrating that’s where he’s played most of his career. This was particularly the case in his early years with Jacksonville. Of the other alignments, slot CB was far less, but his second-highest usage.

In 2019, his first season with the Rams, things looked very similar. Then, from 2020-2022, Ramsey moved around with more versatility, particularly in the slot and playing in the box. The results were largely strong for the seven-time Pro Bowler, who was a cog in their Super Bowl championship.

That 2021 regular season featured his most versatile usage, namely having the most slot (325) and box (131) snaps of any year to date. Ramsey was also a three-time All-Pro selection, including this 2021 season, along with 2017 and 2020. So, there is proven success that is encouraging to be a versatile chess piece in Pittsburgh’s secondary.

The exception is at free safety. Some have speculated that Ramsey could play more as a true deep safety after the exodus of Fitzpatrick. While I’m not questioning if Ramsey could excel there, the chart clearly paints a picture of this being a projection. In the last five seasons, he has just 27 free safety snaps in total. That averages to 5.4 snaps per season.

Earlier in Ramsey’s career, we see a bit more free safety usage. In his second and third seasons as a Jaguar, he had 57 and 40 free safety snaps, so this is quite a while ago and far from a volume that instills absolute confidence in what it could look like for the Black and Gold in 2025.

On paper, I wouldn’t project his free safety snaps to skyrocket all of a sudden, but rather be a slot/box player when he isn’t out wide on an island.

The next player that I’ll look at that Pittsburgh added this offseason is CB Darius Slay:

Similarly, Slay’s usage has vastly been at wide corner, with free safety virtually non-existent over his 12 years to date. In totality, he has a minuscule 14 career free safety snaps, basically one snap per season. There were a couple of years where he broke the 100-snap mark in the slot (2018, 2019) with Detroit, but his steadier and second-highest usage came in the box.

Slay is a six-time Pro Bowler (2017-2019, 2022-2024), one-time All-Pro (2017), and a Super Bowl champion last season with Philadelphia. He is very impressive, and when he was utilized more across the secondary (particularly with the Lions), he still played at a high level.

The Eagles kept him on the outside even more, especially seeing a decrease in slot alignment, with box snaps being the second-most, clearly. Ramsey and Slay do not have strong resumes in terms of free safety experience, vastly wide cornerbacks with more slot and box snaps, which seem more likely to continue.

While he hasn’t gotten the same buzz as these men, a third offseason addition was S Juan Thornhill. Here’s a similar view of his experience:

Of the newest Steelers, Thornhill has the most free safety experience by far in his six years in the NFL. His personal accolades (no Pro-Bowls) are bare compared to Ramsey and Slay, but he has two Super Bowl rings on his fingers after the 2019 and 2022 regular seasons in Kansas City. Notably, those years featured his most total snaps, and at free safety.

If Pittsburgh decides to utilize the new pieces based on past experience, Thornhill would be the clear option to fill Fitzpatrick’s vacated free safety role. This would allow Ramsey and Slay to mostly continue playing the other secondary spots (wide CB, slot CB, box) as they have done throughout their careers.

Then there’s the question of how the returning secondary for the Steelers will mesh with the new. This table has the entire top projections for the 2025 Steelers secondary, viewing career snaps by alignment. I also included total snaps of the four secondary spots, number of seasons, top alignment percentages for each, and sorting is TOP PCT by position:

Most of the group probably lands where you would expect in their top alignments. Compared to what some are speculating this offseason, things could fit cleaner than the concern from some about how the chess pieces will fit.

Having Slay, Porter, and Ramsey, perhaps the most impressive CB trio in the NFL for 2025, is a fantastic luxury. When all three are on the field, I would expect Ramsey to man the slot position, considering he has the most experience there and his skillset as a plus run defender/pass rusher on top of his coverage abilities.

I would prefer to keep Ramsey close to the line of scrimmage rather than move him to safety, as some have suggested. This could make for a nasty duo with Elliott, wreaking havoc on opposing offenses in that area of the field. In dime defense, Beanie Bishop Jr. could cover another slot, hopefully building on some nice moments from his rookie season.

Pittsburgh is fortunate (in my opinion) to have safeties with snap versatility as well. Elliott has played free safety the most in his career, though box and slot were his primary spots in an excellent year one with the Steelers. Thornhill has a bit of that, too, and could make for less stagnation for the defense in 2025.

While Pittsburgh lost a big piece in Fitzpatrick, the past couple of seasons weren’t at the elite level that he’s capable of. The way the Steelers have reworked the room has improved their overall depth, options, and predictability in the secondary. Let’s hope so, and that it’s undeniable en route to making noise in the postseason.