NFL rosters are changing all the time.
The last few days have been crazy. With the NFL regular season about to get underway, the most stressful time of year for fringe and unproven players is over. Training camp and preseason roster cuts are over, and teams have officially established their 53-man rosters.
Every year’s new roster brings a few surprises with it, whether it’s a player who we were all certain was going to be cut, or somebody that is much higher on the depth chart than initially expected.
Here’s a look at the Steelers initial 53-man roster:
But this is not the roster that the Steelers will end the season with. Players get injured, traded, cut, signed, elevated up and down from the practice squad, and shuttled all over the place.
The Week 1 roster is always going to be different than the Week 18 roster.
So, with that in mind, I thought now would be a good time to revisit some Week 1 starters that you probably forgot about. Most years have a wacky starter at some position who was either there because injuries got in the way, the coaching staff was really high on a certain player at the beginning of the year, or some other reason.
In any case, here’s some starters from the last handful of years that you might not remember. I excluded 2023, only because that roster feels pretty fresh.
2022: Ahkello Witherspoon, CB
Akhello Witherspoon played two seasons for the Steelers, 2021 and 2022. The cornerback appeared in 13 total games, starting 7 of them, including the season opener in 2022 alongside Cam Sutton.
Witherspoon had his ups and downs on the field that day. If you remember, that was the absolutely bonkers overtime game that the Steelers and Cincinnati Bengals played. Witherspoon had one of Pittsburgh’s four interceptions against Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow.
However, he also was the corner responsible for covering Ja’Marr Chase in the dying seconds of the game, when Chase caught a pass in the endzone and seemingly won the game for Cincinnati. That blocked extra point by Minkah Fitzpatrick bailed him out.
Witherspoon only played a trio of more games for the Steelers that year, starting them all. His lone interception of the season came in this game.
Last year, he played for the Seattle Seahawks, where he was a starter for all 17 games.
2021: Eric Ebron, TE
Eric Ebron first joined the Steelers in 2020, after four years in Detroit and two in Indianapolis. His first season as a Steeler saw him play in 15 games and start 9, but he suffered some key drops along the way and entered the 2021 season on a reduced role.
He played just 8 games for Pittsburgh in 2021, suffering an injury that put him on IR in November and kept him out for the rest of the year.
Of those 8 games he played in Pittsburgh, he only started 3, but that included Week 1 as the Steelers walked into Orchard Park and stunned the Buffalo Bills by, winning 23-16. He caught a single pass for 19 yards in that game, and wouldn’t catch a pass again until Week 4.
The Steelers were Ebron’s last NFL team.
2020: Stefen Wisniewski, RT
Stefen Wisniewski is the ultimate forgotten Week 1 starter, and I have a very good theory for exactly why: he only ever played one game for the Steelers.
In Pittsburgh’s 2020 season opener in New York against the Giants, Wisniewski filled in on the offensive line to guard Ben Roethlisberger as he led his Steelers to a 26-16 win, the first of 11 straight victories in a row. We don’t talk about what happened afterwards.
Wisniewski, born in Pittsburgh, was filling in for the veteran David DeCastro, who was injured prior to the season starting. Wisniewski was on the field for 91% of Pittsburgh’s offensive snaps (58 of 64), but sadly left the game was injury and subsequently placed on Injured Reserve.
That would stand as his only time with the Steelers; after being activated off IR, he was released by the team, and picked up by Kansas City for a second stint with the Chiefs. He played 4 games down the stretch for KC before ultimately retiring after a career that spanned 139 games.
2019: Kameron Kelly, DB
Kameron Kelly played 14 NFL games, all for the Steelers, in his NFL career. His Week 1 appearance with Pittsburgh was the only start of his career.
Thrown into the fire against the high-powered New England offense of the time, Kelly recorded 7 tackles, but was rendered ineffective, as was the rest of the Steeler defense, as Tom Brady and his group of merry men cakewalked their wy to a 33-3 win in Week 1 over Pittsburgh.
Kelly played sparingly for the Steelers, but always made an in-game appearance up until mid-December, when he had an incident with police and was promptly cut from the team.
The charges against him were dropped a year later, but the undrafted defensive back never made his way back to the NFL. He has since bounced around, playing in the CFL, XFL, and UFL (after being selected in the Super Draft portion of the Dispersal Draft).
2018: Jonathan Bostic, LILB
A free agent signing by the Steelers ahead of the 2018 season, Bostic was one of several reinforcements the team added in the hopes of shoring up an awful defense the year prior.
Unfortunately, none of those signings really worked out. Pittsburgh’s defense cost them several games, especially in the fourth quarter, and their offense could only do so much to counteract the defense’s self-destruction.
Bostic, though, for his part, played every game that season for the Steelers, starting 14 of them, including in Week 1. He recorded a sack (one of his 2.5 on the year) in that wacky, mucky, 21-21 tie with the Browns in Cleveland to open the year.
This was his only season in Pittsburgh; the linebacker was released after the year and landed in Washington, playing for the next four years before retiring.
(Featured photo by Matt Freed/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
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