PHOENIX — In looking for clues to how the Pittsburgh Steelers plan deploy their defensive backs under a new coaching staff this season, consider how coach Mike McCarthy answered the first question he was asked about free-agent signing Jaquan Brisker.
The first player he mentioned wasn’t Brisker. It was Jalen Ramsey.
“We’re talking about player flexibility,” McCarthy said from the site of the NFL owners meetings last week. “It’s really the first conversation I had with Jalen.”
Ramsey was the Steelers’ marquee acquisition for the secondary last offseason. This year, Brisker was one of two high-profile free-agent signings at defensive back.
The other, Jamel Dean, is an established veteran outside cornerback. Brisker is a safety. And with returning starters DeShon Elliott (a safety) and Joey Porter Jr. (a cornerback), along with another starting-caliber veteran cornerback on the roster in Brandin Echols, where does that leave Ramsey?
To hear McCarthy talk, it has him deployed as the “Swiss Army Knife” all over the defense.
In conjunction with new defensive coordinator Patrick Graham, that’s the way McCarthy likes it.
“Whether you’re a pass rusher or a dynamic secondary player, if you can line up the safety, nickel, dime and jump out to corner in a matchup situation, there’s tremendous value in that,” McCarthy said. “And that’s why with Brisker, his ability to play multiple positions (is appealing), and it’s going to be the same way in the draft.”
With the Steelers holding 12 selections in the Pittsburgh-based draft later this month, the team likely isn’t done adding defensive backs to a group that had bona fide starters in Porter, Dean, Elliott, Ramsey, Brisker and Echols along with proven veteran starting cornerback Asante Samuel Jr. and younger cornerbacks Cory Trice and Donte Kent and others.
The fulcrum for how the division of labor plays out rests in the deployment of Ramsey, the three-time first-team AP NFL All-Pro cornerback who joined the Steelers via a late-June trade last year.
Ramsey began the season playing outside cornerback in the base defense and moved to the slot in the much-used nickel package. But by Week 9, he was playing a position he hadn’t played since his days at Florida State: free safety.
That move was made because Elliott suffered a season-ending injury and in part because veteran Juan Thornhill struggled at free safety. But an unspoken aspect of Ramsey’s move was that at age 31, he isn’t as adept at keeping up with the NFL’s best receivers in one-on-one coverage anymore.
Still, Ramsey in 2025 flashed some of the elite playmaking skills that will make him an almost certain future Hall of Famer. He’s clearly still of great use to a modern NFL defense.
Ramsey during his first season with the Steelers played 94.9% of the defensive snaps, trailing only linebacker Patrick Queen. According to Pro Football Focus data, Ramsey played 450 snaps at free safety, 359 as the slot corner, 184 as “in the box” strong safety or hybrid linebacker and 160 as a wide cornerback.
“Position flexibility,” McCarthy said, “is something that I put a lot of value in.”
It should be noted that Ramsey played outside CB for just 13 snaps over the final nine games of the season (including playoffs). And if there was ever any question that his time lined up on the boundary against an opposing wide receiver was over, that the Steelers gave Dean a three, $36.75 million contract — and will soon give much more than that to Porter — to play outside CB signals even further that Ramsey will be utilized elsewhere.
Where, exactly, largely will be up to Graham. With five months to go before the regular-season opener, much can still be determined. But as things stand now, it won’t be surprising if Ramsey lines up at spots all over the defense based on a given down-and-distance situation, matchup with an opponent or even attrition/availability of the Steelers’ other defensive backs.
“I’ve known Patrick for quite some time,” said McCarthy, who hired him to the Green Bay Packers defensive staff for the 2018 season. “He knows how I feel about the history of this defense. I mean, this system’s been in place since (former Steelers and Packers defensive coordinator) Dom Capers, Bill Cowher put this system in 1992. Mike Tomlin has done a great job carrying it forward. So we’re looking to build off of what’s in place.”