Player: CB Cory Trice Jr.
Stock Value: Down
Reasoning: For three years, Cory Trice Jr. has retained his place with the Steelers by virtue of the promise of his abilities. Now, the defensive back room may be too crowded for him to survive another go-around. His repeated injuries have marred his career, and the coaching staff that drafted him is gone. Now he’ll have to prove to Mike McCarthy, Patrick Graham, Joe Whitt Jr., and Jason Simmons he’s the real deal.
It’s rare for a seventh-round draft pick to earn as many chances as the Steelers have given Cory Trice Jr. Missing the entirety of two of his first three seasons due to injury and the majority of the other, it’s a minor miracle he has never found himself without a job. Of course, it’s easy to retain a player’s rights when he spends so much time on the Reserve/Injured List.
But with Mike McCarthy running the ship and a new crop of defensive backs in town, Cory Trice is in trouble. While the Steelers lost James Pierre, they retained Asante Samuel Jr. and added Jamel Dean. In the draft, they took Daylen Everette in the third round. On top of that, they selected S Robert Spears-Jennings in the seventh round.
With Jalen Ramsey and others having position flexibility, that puts Trice in an even more vulnerable position. While he has spoken about his belief that he can play in the slot, thus far, he has been confined to the outside cornerback role. But the versatility of others gives Pittsburgh flexibility with the numbers in the secondary. They can, for example, keep five “safeties” if multiple players can play in the slot. And it depends on how you count Ramsey, too, who could start at safety.
Right now, the likely rostered defensive backs up to this point are Joey Porter Jr., Jamel Dean, Jalen Ramsey, DeShon Elliott, Jaquan Brisker, Brandin Echols, Asante Samuel Jr., and Daylen Everette. That’s eight players there, and there’s potentially room for two, maybe three more. In the mix are rookie Robert Spears-Jennings, Sebastian Castro, last year’s seventh-rounder Donte Kent, and Cory Trice Jr., among others. At the very least, he has stiff competition ahead of him, and his scholarship is over.
With the 2025 season behind us and the new league year underway, we still have stock to take. Already promising a year of change, they are shaking things up. That is unavoidable, of course, when you gut the coaching staff. Mike Tomlin’s resignation will fundamentally change this football team, including the playoffs on the roster.
After a long season, we have finally seen that this Steelers team is playoff-bound. But they also showed that their progress was actually minimal, since they made it no further. Two years in a row, with two different quarterbacks, they went 10-7 and lost in the Wild Card Round. The only differences are that they ended the season on a higher note and won the division. But it didn’t help.