Steelers Now
Steve Palazzolo of The 33rd Team expects big things out of Pittsburgh Steelers safety Jaquan Brisker this season. Brisker signed a one-year, $5.5 million deal this past March to play for his hometown team. Palazzolo thinks the Steelers got an absolute bargain of a deal.
“He barley got paid,” Palazzolo said Monday on his Check the Mic podcast. “Brisker against the world here. He’s going to prove them wrong. Why didn’t the Bears bring him back on the cheap? There’s some doubt around Jaquan Brisker’s game.
“He signed for $5.5 million for one year. That’s the league not believing in Brisker, who’s my breakout player. You’re gonna be a believer in Jaquan Brisker. There’s another level to his game as well. He’s gonna be an enforcer for the Steelers. He’s getting a multi-year deal from someone else at the end of this season. A good multi-year deal. He’s getting paid, as a safety, at the end of the year.”
Although Brisker is a Pittsburgh guy who became an All-American at Penn State, his pro football home had always been Chicago.
The Bears drafted him in the second round back in 2022, and for his first four NFL seasons, Brisker played almost the same amount of snaps at free safety (1,270) as he did in the box (1,290), according to PFF.
Now, the expectation is for Brisker to spend most of his time at free safety, with DeShon Elliot starting on the strong side.
We’re still almost two months out from training camp, so Brisker hasn’t gotten to flex his muscles much with his new team. But so far, the return home has gone as hoped.
“Yeah, I am very excited,” Brisker said after OTAs on May28. “I mean, we got a lot of different things, a lot of different personnel and things like that, and just not showing what we’re going to do, Having a little disguise to it or sometimes we’ll just be in it, but it’s been giving us a lot of flexibility.”
On Tuesday, Brisker wrote on X, “I’m really Blessed ! This is what I prayed for, this exact situation.. grass is greener.”
Joe Smeltzer contributed.
This article originally appeared on Steelers Now: Steelers Hard-Hitting Safety Primed for Breakout Season: ‘He’s Gonna Be an Enforcer’
