Player: RB Kaleb Johnson
Stock Value: Up
Reasoning: New Steelers HC Mike McCarthy made abundantly clear that second-year RB Kaleb Johnson will have a fresh start with him. A 2025 third-round pick, Johnson had a rookie season to forget, and forget it they shall. But he still has Jaylen Warren and Rico Dowdle ahead of him on the depth chart, so playing time will be hard to come by, to say the least. That’s assuming that he makes the 53-man roster, which is not a given.
If Kaleb Johnson has a future with the Steelers, he has an uphill battle ahead of him. A battle up the depth chart, more specifically, stationed behind Jaylen Warren and Rico Dowdle. The Steelers figure to be high on their top two backs, combining to average about $6 million per season. But what Johnson does have, at least evidently, is the support of the coaching staff.
The Steelers drafted Kaleb Johnson in the third round last year, and he did not play much. When he did, he did not perform well. He posted a run success rate of just 25 percent, and the less said of his kick return work, the better.
Outside parties placed expectations sky high, projecting Johnson would be the starter by October. Some predicted a 1,000-yard season, but he didn’t even come close to 100. On 28 carries, he compiled just 69 yards with a long of nine yards.
We don’t yet know whether this is positive or negative, but Johnson does return this season to effectively an all-new coaching staff. We don’t know how he got along with Eddie Faulkner, but the former Steelers RB coach was well liked. Now he has Mike McCarthy as his head coach and play caller and his hand-picked coaching staff.
Notably, the Steelers’ new running backs coach has never been a running backs coach before. Previously working with the offensive line, however, he has had his hand in everything. Perhaps a younger, hungry coach is what Kaleb Johnson needs, a project to take on.
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 they ended the season on a higher note and won the division. But it didn’t help.