{"id":410483,"date":"2025-10-01T03:10:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T03:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/410483\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T03:10:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T03:10:11","slug":"pittsburgh-steelers-rookie-cracks-top-15-in-pro-football-focus-rankings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/410483\/","title":{"rendered":"Pittsburgh Steelers rookie cracks top 15 in Pro Football Focus’ rankings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pittsburgh Steelers rookie cracks top 15 in Pro Football Focus’ rankings<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a><\/p>\n

Despite already having an edge rusher room of T.J. Watt, Alex Highsmith, and Nick Herbig, the Pittsburgh Steelers decided to add another piece to the group this offseason, selecting Jack Sawyer out of Ohio State in the fourth round.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Though Sawyer hasn’t gotten much playing time so far in his rookie campaign, appearing in just 65 defensive snaps through four games, the 23-year-old has made the most of his opportunities.<\/a><\/p>\n

Sawyer has tallied 14 tackles, one sack, two tackles for loss, three quarterback pressures, and four defensive stops<\/a> in 2025, and even earned some recognition from Pro Football Focus in their recent rookie rankings.<\/p>\n

PFF ranked Sawyer as the 15th highest-graded rookie in the NFL through four weeks with a grade of 72.9.<\/a><\/p>\n

“Sawyer is the highest-graded rookie edge defender through the first month of the season.\u00a0Sawyer has produced three pressures and recorded a 14.3% win rate across 28 such snaps,” Lauren Gray of PFF wrote.<\/a><\/p>\n

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The sample size has been incredibly small, but there’s no denying that Sawyer has shown a ton of promise to begin his NFL career. The 2024-25 National Champion could work his way into a valuable rotational role on Pittsburgh’s defense sooner rather than later and eventually develop into an impactful starter.<\/p>\n

If Sawyer can turn out to be a productive pass rusher for the Steelers, his value as a fourth-round pick in the 2025 NFL Draft will look like a complete steal. Sawyer still has a long way to go, but he’s off to a fantastic start.<\/p>\n

MORE NFL NEWS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pittsburgh Steelers rookie cracks top 15 in Pro Football Focus’ rankings originally appeared on The Sporting News Despite…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198414,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2055],"tags":[6310,7,295,6,6313,520,57,2360,410,8358,70291,426,5226],"class_list":{"0":"post-410483","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-steelers","8":"tag-alex-highsmith","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-jack-sawyer","11":"tag-nfl","12":"tag-nick-herbig","13":"tag-pittsburgh","14":"tag-pittsburgh-steelers","15":"tag-pittsburghsteelers","16":"tag-pro-football-focus","17":"tag-rookie-campaign","18":"tag-rookie-rankings","19":"tag-steelers","20":"tag-t-j-watt"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115296719665261151","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}