Player: CB Donte Jackson
Stock Value: Down
Reasoning: After missing his first game as a Steeler, Donte Jackson had one of his worst. He was badly burned on an early deep throw, and generally struggled in coverage. While he didn’t miss any tackles, the Chiefs weren’t shy around him.
On the whole, Donte Jackson has had a nice season for the Steelers. That is mostly because he is among the league leaders in interceptions, but there is room for criticism in his game. He has always played hot and cold, and that didn’t change when he changed teams. On Wednesday against the Chiefs, he left the faucet running on cold.
The easy low-light to point out is the 40-plus yard deep ball Jackson gave up to Justin Watson. While Watson makes a play here and there, he is not exactly a feature of the Chiefs’ offense. Yet he simply straight-up lost his one-on-one battle, and that as a key early moment in the game. It set the tone for what would turn into a blowout.
https://x.com/NFL/status/1871986428952895717
Were it just one bad play, that might be one thing. While Donte Jackson didn’t give up a ton of receptions, he simply struggled in coverage throughout the day. He did lose every time the Chiefs targeted him, about four or five times. A credit to him, however, for tackling well, which he had struggled with lately.
The Steelers had to do without Joey Porter Jr. in the last game, and Jackson was just coming back from an injury. In fact, Jackson has been banged up almost all season, usually missing a handful of snaps per game. One might wonder what sort of ailments he is dealing with, and how that might affect his play.
But the only thing that we can go on is what is on the tape, and Jackson’s latest tape was bad. Of course, the entire Steelers defense, more or less, has been bad. Some of that has to do with poor communication, but there is also just a lack of execution. Jackson is a part of that, and the Bengals won’t be an easy team to fix it against.
As the season progresses, Steelers players’ stocks rise and fall. The nature of the evaluation differs with the time of year, with in-season considerations being more often short-term. Considerations in the offseason often have broader implications, particularly when players lose their jobs, or the team signs someone. This time of year is full of transactions, whether minor or major.
A bad game, a new contract, an injury, a promotion—any number of things affect a player’s value. Think of it as a stock on the market, based on speculation. You’ll feel better about a player after a good game, or worse after a bad one. Some stock updates are minor, while others are likely to be quite drastic, so bear in mind the degree. I’ll do my best to explain the nature of that in the reasoning section of each column.
