For a team that finished first in Defensive DVOA in 2020 (and first against the pass by a large margin), the Steelers are undergoing a lot of uncertainty in their secondary right now. Losing outstanding slot cornerback Mike Hilton to the Bengals in free agency was a blow, and as it stands, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of clarity in regards to who will start at outside cornerback opposite Joe Haden. Losing Steven Nelson in a salary cap-based release was another hit in that Nelson played more snaps (839) at outside cornerback last season for the Steelers than anyone else on the roster, including Haden. One assumes that Cameron Sutton, who probably has the best tools to be Haden’s bookend, would be slotted into that role, but as the Steelers get ready to deal with the Bills’ high-powered passing game on Sunday, September 12, there’s more we don’t know than what we know.
When asked on Wednesday whether second-year undrafted free agent James Pierre would be his third cornerback, defensive coordinator Keith Butler was… pointed in his response.
“Well, we’ve got several guys and I’m not gonna tell you who the guy is. I’m gonna make dadgum Buffalo figure that out, okay? We’ve got several guys who can play and move around in different positions, and we’re gonna move them around in different positions. In terms of who’s gonna be the nickel, who’s gonna be the left corner, who’s gonna be the right corner, who’s gonna be the free safety, the strong safety, all that stuff… fortunately for us, we’ve got some guys who know the whole defense and they know what we’re gonna expect out of each position. We can change positions with them if we need to.”
When pressed whether he was comfortable with four cornerbacks, Butler opened up the possibility of an opportunity.
“I don’t think anybody’s comfortable with four cornerbacks. We’ve got guys who can play different positions. Cam [Sutton] can play different positions. He can play the nickel. 42 [Pierre] has shown that he can play in preseason. We think we’re okay right now to play them in different positions. If somebody becomes available out there in Never-Never Land, we’ll see what happens.”
Not that I, a Seattle resident, enjoy seeing the Emerald City referred to as “Never-Never Land,” but it may be from these very environs that the Steelers have found their missing piece. On Friday, they traded a 2023 fifth-round pick to the Seahawks for the services of cornerback Ahkello Witherspoon, who Seattle signed to a one-year, $4 million, fully guaranteed contract in March. The Seahawks were more than familiar with Witherspoon, as the 2017 third-round pick out of Colorado played his first four seasons with the 49ers. But as training camp and the preseason went along, Witherspoon found himself dropping down the depth chart as his size (6-foot-2 and 195 pounds), normally a plus in Pete Carroll’s defenses, didn’t make up for his lack of trail speed against the league’s better receivers.
Trailing is not Witherspoon's game.
This showed up in a brutal rep against D.K. Metcalf in practice (as Gregg Bell of the Tacoma News Tribune detailed), and on a 35-yard pass from Teddy Bridgewater to Jerry Jeudy in Week 2 of the preseason. If this throw was the one that gave Bridgewater the Broncos’ starting job (and we have hypothesized precisely that), it may also be that it was the coverage that started Witherspoon’s decline. On both the Metcalf and Jeudy plays, Witherspoon (at the top of the screen) simply couldn’t keep up.
So, if he’s not a long strider, what is he? The 49ers could never quite figure it out. In their Super Bowl season of 2019, San Francisco’s pass defense improved exponentially when Witherspoon was benched for performance-based reasons in favor of Emmanuel Moseley. In 2020, Witherspoon was a healthy scratch in Week 9 against the Packers, and this was at a time when the 49ers’ secondary (as well as every other position group on the team) resembled a MASH unit. Head coach Kyle Shanahan attributed this to special teams reasons, which didn’t hold a ton of water. And it’s not a great sign when the Seahawks, whose cornerback situation is as iffy as any in the league right now, decided to punt on the deal when this trade was made possible.
It's time to redefine Witherspoon's role.
We know that Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin is one of the more astute secondary coaches in the league, so he must have an idea of how to use Witherspoon. We can only guess, but if we were to guess, it would be as more of a slot-backer hybrid than any position that would require him to deal outside with, say, Stefon Diggs in Week 1. That, folks, is No Bueno.
Witherspoon hasn’t taken a ton of slot snaps in his career, and that move requires a different skill set, but it’s a skill set he’s shown more often than his ability to avoid getting beaten deep in a straight line, or crossing over the middle of the field. This rep against the aforementioned D.K. Metcalf in Week 17 of the 2020 season was enlightening in that regard. Witherspoon didn’t have to follow Metcalf deep — he just had to stay in the play and mirror what Metcalf was doing. He has the change of direction skills, short-area closing speed, and scrappiness to do that.
And this rep against receiver Tyler Lockett in the same game showed that Witherspoon could handle limiting yards after the catch when he had everything in front of him.
As for the hybrid linebacker role, Witherspoon has played 266 snaps in the box in his career, and that’s where his size and scrappiness can be an asset. Interior short-area coverage has been an issue for the Steelers since Ryan Shazier retired, and whenever Devin Bush isn’t healthy (which amounted to 11 regular-season games and the postseason in 2020), so perhaps Tomlin and his staff are looking to redefine Witherspoon’s role around what he can do well, while minimizing his liabilities as a player. As they say, that’s called good coaching.
This would not be the first time in recent years that the Steelers traded for a defensive back and redefined his role to great effect. The 2019 trade for Minkah Fitzpatrick, in which Pittsburgh told the former Dolphins and Alabama multi-position star to stick and stay at free safety gave the Steelers a top-five player at that position. Perhaps Witherspoon has the juice to excel in roles that don’t test his deep speed, and focus instead on his aggressiveness in more confined situations.
Because if the Steelers decide to put Witherspoon in the outside cornerback box play after play, it might not be long before that decision is reversed, and they’re back in the hunt for a serviceable defensive back.
