Behind the Steel Curtain
This week’s Read & React looks back at linebacker Payton Wilson’s 2024 season, then drafts the 10 best players on the roster.
OTAs are here as the NFL season inches closer. This week, Read & React will be taking a look at a young defender who could be stepping into a bigger role in 2025. Plus, we’ll be ranking the top 10 players on the Steelers roster — draft-style! What are the biggest strengths on the team this season?
As always, we’ll be divvying up our review and analysis. Ryland will focus on Payton’s work against the run, and Ryan will examine how Payton fared in pass coverage.
RB: Per usual, I’ll start with a TL;DR of Wilson’s status at this point in the offseason.
Drafted in the third round of the 2024 NFL Draft, Wilson, the reigning Butkus Award winner as college football’s best linebacker, was seen as a bit of a steal (and a surprise pick) for Pittsburgh. The team hadn’t exactly telegraphed a need at inside linebacker, but it proved to be a worthwhile selection as Wilson logged 45% of the team’s defensive snaps his rookie year as Cole Holcomb never saw the field due to injury.
How exactly did Wilson, an elite college linebacker with a 9.89 RAS and an absurd 4.43-second 40-yard dash fall all the way to the third round? Multiple shoulder and ACL injuries, including a report (that Wilson later refuted) that he was missing the ligament in his right knee.
Wilson played primarily on passing downs his rookie year, showing encouraging durability with appearances in every game on the Steelers’ schedule. His first NFL season had some ups and downs, but the overwhelming consensus is that the Steelers got a future stud at inside linebacker.
Wilson logged 78 combined tackles, three tackles for loss, one forced fumble, one interception, and two passes defensed in 2024.
I’ll start off by taking a look at the rookie’s run defense:
Listed at 6’4, 242 pounds on the Steelers website, Wilson has a lean, lanky frame for an NFL inside linebacker. His athleticism is excellent, but there were concerns regarding how he’d hold up against the run game at the NFL level.
Pittsburgh seemingly didn’t entirely trust Wilson in that phase of the game either (it didn’t help that every-down linebacker Patrick Queen has a similar block-shedding weakness), with Elandon Roberts taking most of the run-down workload opposite Queen at inside linebacker last season. And it seems the newly-signed Malik Harrison will be filling that role to some extent in 2025.
However, when watching every Wilson run defense snap in his last handful of games of the season, I came away impressed with how impactful he was. It’s a small sample size — he averaged around 10 plays agains the run per game — but to me, he played his way to a bigger role next season.
We can get the bad out of the way first. Some of...
