Forgotten Steelers Rookie Looks Like HIDDEN GEM

All right, let’s talk about the Pittsburgh Steelers. Of course, the season is almost here. Training camp just a few short days away. It’s about time to see what this team is going to look like for the 2025 campaign. And we’ve covered the Steelers a lot. Of course, this offseason. There’s been a lot to cover, but there’s one under the radar addition that not a lot of people are focusing on that when you do a deep dive like we did. There’s a lot to be excited about. We’ll get to all that in just one second. But first, I’m Nick. That is Andrew. And this is Saturday Morning Inspection. [Music] All right, guys. Talking Pittsburgh. And look, you know, we’ve got some juicy stuff for you today because we’re making this video while I’m on vacation with my family in an undisclosed location. That tells you how interesting this addition is for the Pittsburgh Steelers. And we’re talking young defensive back Sebastian Castro, undrafted free agent out of Iowa. He is an interesting prospect. Played corner at the collegiate ranks. He’s listed currently as a safety. We don’t know exactly where he’s going to end up for the Pittsburgh Steelers except that he’s a defensive back piece that is a the pure undeniable embodiment, the definition of a lowrisk, highreward move. Castro had a really really good 2023 season for Iowa, Big 10 Conference, good competition, looked like a star, massive drop off in 2024. So, you don’t know exactly what you’re going to get with Castro, but when you look at the data and the chance for him to be what he was in 2023, you’re talking a first round kind of talent. Let’s jump into our first graphic here to highlight what I’m talking about. So, we’re looking at the cornerback position. We know again that Castro currently listed on a lot of sites as a safety. Not exactly sure where he’ll end up if he makes a team, but just because he played corner in college, we’re going to compare him to other corners. So, we’re looking at Castro on the far right here with Travis Hunter on the left, Trey Amos, and Jade Baron. And again, Castro’s 2023 season to wrap things up. On the right, we’ve got the grades according to PFF, overall defensive grade in blue, coverage grade in red. And you can see Sebastian Casher’s 2023 season significantly better than Travis Hunter’s season last year, Amos’ season, and Baron season last year. And all three of those guys obviously great players, first round picks. Amos, one of the steals of the second round. You talk about incredible value, right? The Steelers got a guy that flashed first, second round potential, first second round performance against quality competition, and they got him as an undrafted free agent. Now, it’s undeniable he had a bad 2024 season. one of the main reasons why he fell out of the draft altogether. But if there is a chance that 2024 was the aberration and 2023 is who he really is, this is just an incredible value and a great find for the Pittsburgh Steelers. But it’s not just the raw analytics when you look at some of just the data and the numbers as a defensive back. Uh Castro fits in very nicely with these three guys as well. These these incredible talents. Let’s go to our next chart here to highlight that. So we’re looking at passer rating allowed again. Looking at Hunter, Amos, and Baron working left to right in Sebastian Casher’s 2023 season. Again, remember it’s 2024, not good. 2023 really good. You can see the pass rating allowed here for Castro. A little bit better than Amos, not quite as good as guys like Hunter or Baron, but still fits right in elite level pass rating allowed. So, the message here is very clearly that you look at 2023, Castro looks like a first or second round pick. 2024 looks like an undrafted free agent. So, the question is, who are you getting? And if you’re the Pittsburgh Steelers with the current defensive backfield situation, you need all the help you can get. Obviously, we know the deals made, the addition of Darius Slay, trading away Minka Fitzpatrick, adding in Jaylen Ramsey, and that kind of opens up the doors and the rumors or opportunities for Sebastian Castro to become a safety kind of player potentially, it’s early in the National Football League. And when you look at the coverage situation altogether, the secondary for Pittsburgh, that is actually outside of quarterback was their biggest area of concern. Let me pull up another chart here to highlight what we’re talking about. So, one of the things we like to look at this channel is something we call secondary quality. This is your coverage grade minus your pass rush grade. Logically, if you have a good pass rush, you would think your coverage grade would be outstanding, right? The quarterback can’t throw the ball deep. Doesn’t have a lot of time. Got to get rid of the football. You get interceptions. And you can see with teams like the Chiefs and the Eagles, the two Super Bowl teams, that’s not, you know, something that’s important factor to notice here. They both had positive secondary quality scores. The Pittsburgh Steelers had a minus 33 minus 33 secondary quality. Their coverage did not get it done last year despite having a very very good pass rush. And one of the things to really point out here just for you Steelers fans to understand how big of a problem this was, you actually finished worse in a metric than the Cleveland Browns. Right? Anytime you’re worse than Cleveland than anything, that is a problem, right? And you can see on the screen in front of you there that the Steelers secondary quality score was below Cleveland. Big- time issue. That’s one of the reasons why they made so many of the moves this offseason. Slay moving off Fitzpatrick, adding in Ramsay. What does Sebastian Castro do here in this situation? Look, Undrafted free agent. It’s a long shot to make the team certainly contribute. That’s undeniable. But the potential is there if he is that first second round guy we saw in 2023. The Steelers spent literally nothing. Spent no draft picks, very little salary for a first/ second round defensive back. You talk about an altering a secondary altering kind of move that would be this kind of impact. Now look, if 2024 is who he really is, look, he doesn’t make the team and you move on. It cost you an undrafted roster slot, a camp body, not a huge loss, right? You’re talking about again, incredibly low risk, incredibly high reward. We’ll have to see how it all shakes out. Of course, Sebastian Castro, he’s got to prove when we get into practice, when we get into the preseason, how good he can be for this Pittsburgh defense. But it’s clearly a position group of need. And when you have a lot of needs, when you got a problem you need to solve, sometimes it takes some of these lowrisk, high reward moves to push you over the edge. And Sebastian Casho, I don’t know if it’s this season, but certainly in the long term, now that they’re, you know, got some openings at the safety position, could be one of those guys to grow and develop to become a key contributor for Pittsburgh. All right, M. I’m curious what your thoughts are on all of this. But first, Steelers fans, in the comment section below, we’re talking undrafted free agents, of course, when we’re talking about Sebastian Castro. So that leads me with you for today’s question. Who is in your opinion the greatest undrafted free agent in Pittsburgh Steelers history? A lot of different ways you could go here. You go old school, new school, kind of in between. Really curious what you guys say. Again, your opinion. Greatest undrafted free agent in Steelers history. Let us know in the comments section below. And while you’re down there, make sure you sign up for our weekly newsletter courtesy of the Substack platform. 100% free. Doesn’t cost you anything. We provide extra content. We highlight the comments of the week. A lot of interesting stuff in there. Again, 100% free. Sign up below. There’s a link in the description box. But M, I will throw it over to you now. What are your thoughts on this latest out of Pittsburgh? Yeah, Nate, I I think this guy is, like you said, you hammered at home. And I I think this is still worth saying again, very lowrisk move here by the Steelers. Like you said, he he had not as good. I wouldn’t say he was horrible in 2024, but it was nowhere near what he was in 2023. 66 overall grade. That’s very average, maybe even a little bit below average when you look at some of the stuff he did. But Castro definitely is a player who’s had some great years. 2023 was definitely elite. Even when you roll it back to 2022, he had a decent year. 76.3 overall grade, 77.5 coverage grade. Not too bad. So, I think when you look at the evidence, there’s more good than there was bad as far as 2024 goes. So, I think this guy at least does he fall back a little to that 91 overall elite defensive grade of 2023. I’m not sure. Does he at least come back more to the norm? I think definitely so. But still, there’s that chance that he comes back and he’s that elite player. So, no matter what, I think it’s worth giving this guy a look, bringing him into a team that, you know, has a great defensive back locker room right now. tons of good safeties, scutts, corners, everybody around him to help bring him up. And I think this guy could be someone that’s doing really, really great stuff. So for Steelers, I think this definitely was a steal. I think this is a good pickup because this is a guy who again look really great 2023, not so great 2024, but has evidence of being good in back-to-back years in 2022, 2023. I think that in itself is worth taking a look at. But also this guy, he comes from a program that I think it’s worth taking a risk on. You look at, you know, Iowa, what they’ve done in the DB department in recent history. We’re just talking like the last five years. They’ve got three starters in the NFL. They got Ammani Hooker for the Titans. They got Gino Stone, former Raven, now Bengal. Then you got Cooper Deene, Super Bowl champion. We all know how that one worked out. So, this is a team in Iowa that’s really put some good DB prospects out. This isn’t just like, you know, sometimes you see teams there’s like a oneoff guy that comes in maybe, you know, there there’s no history, but when you look at Iowa, there is a recent history of producing quality defensive back talent. So, I think Sebastian Castro is a really great, really interesting pickup. This is a guy who not only was he really great in, you know, coverage, he was a great run defender as well. And I think that’s something that he can hang his hat on for the 2024 season. He still did great in run defense in the 2024 season as far as 76.2 run defense grade there. He was able to come up, make stops, do really good things like that. So having a valuable run defender as, you know, a depth uh corner piece for this team, I think it’s really good. I think uh Castro he he checks a lot of boxes for me because when you look at a steel when you look at a guy that’s an undrafted free agent and we say this all the time what you want is someone who does one thing really really good and in Castro’s uh case last year 2024 he was a decent run defender that could be something you say he did good but when you roll it back another year another two years he was really good in run defense but also elite in coverage two years back to back. So, I think this guy is very worth taking a look at. I think he could be a possible mega steal here for the Steelers. If he’s anything like 2023, you absolutely hit it out of the park home run. You’ve got like a starting corner for the rest of your days here in Pittsburgh. If he’s somewhere in the middle, he’s a great depth piece. He’s a guy that can use in your rotation, get him in there, and he would be a really solid addition and an undrafted free agent. I don’t know what more you could want here. I think that’s the perfect uh you know that’s the perfect definition of an undrafted free agent steel. A guy that gets playing time on your roster as an undrafted free agent. That’s out of the park. That’s a great draft pick or great pickup in that case. So overall, I think it’s a great move by the Steelers. I think it’s going to help him out. Give him a little more depth at the quarterback or DB position. And I think this guy I it’s worth it to me. Keep your eye on him in training camp. I think there could be something a little bit special here with Sebastian Castro. And just one final point to end on, I think you brought up something very important. If you looked at all three of his seasons and assume there’s an there’s an equal chance he could be one of those three players and you you know kind of come up with what you expected value for him to get a little mathematical for you guys. So in 2022 he was good solid player. We’ll say oh he’s a that’s fourth round pick caliber. In 2023 he was first round pick caliber and in 2024 he was an undrafted free agent caliber. If you average all those three guys, those three calipers out, you get like a fourth round pick, right? So the expected value you could logically assume for for Sebastian Cash would be a fourth round pick kind of player. He went undrafted. Now look, the the way that works out of course with you know what time, you know, were you a senior, were you a junior, were you a sophomore, what players you had around you, right? more factors in in that of course, but from a strictly highlevel logical perspective, the Steelers got a fourth round pick value just just from a math probabilistic stance as an undrafted free agent. So again, you talk about whatever angle you want to approach here, this was an incredible value by the Steelers front office. This was a great get. Again, if it doesn’t work out, eh, undrafted free agent, can’t body, who cares? But if it does work out and he’s just a solid depth piece, fantastic. Awesome. And there is still that chance, that nonzero chance. He is a superstar first round pit corner in which case it’s one of the steals of the year. So again great job by the Pittsburgh Steelers and I agree with you M 100% Sebastian Castro a guy to keep an eye on.

The Pittsburgh Steelers quietly have another young rookie emerging. This Steelers rookie is the ultimate low risk high reward addition. Pittsburgh may end up pulling off one of the bigger steals fo the year. Fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers should be excited by this news.

Check out and sign up for our FREE weekly newsletter below:
https://substack.com/@saturdaymorninginspection

Join this channel to get access to perks:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdfUn9GfyhJh5Klp0_0BOeg/join

For business inquiries contact us at: saturdaymorninginspection@gmail.com

#steelers #pittsburghsteelers #herewego

6 comments
Leave a Reply