He piled up 86 tackles, 29 tackles for loss and 10.5 sacks in 22 games as a sophomore and a junior, earning 1st Team All-America honors and a team captainship. Ossai was highly productive on the field at Texas. His quickness is reminiscent of Bud Dupree’s and presents problems for offensive tackles who don’t move their feet with urgency. That ten-yard split shows up in the way Ossai bursts off the football. His first ten yards were clocked in 1.58 though, which is faster than the projected first-round picks at his position (Kwity Paye, Azeez Ojulari, Jaelan Phillips, Jayson Oweh). Ossai is 6’4-256 and ran 4.62 in the forty. If Ossai is there, and the Steelers don’t like their options in that slot on offense, he’d be a smart pick. That puts him right in range for the Steelers at 55. I’ve seen him go at 49 to the Cardinals, at 53 to the Titans, at 56 to the Seahawks and at 58 to the Ravens. Ossai is routinely being mocked in the middle of the second round. Here’s a breakdown of Ossai, and why he’s my favorite edge defender for the Steelers at that point in the draft. If that’s the case, my hope is they’ll target Joseph Ossai from the University of Texas. It’s not implausible, then, to imagine a scenario where a player on offense the Steelers highly covet is not available in round two and they go with an edge instead. And we know the Steelers love drafting linebackers. We know, given the current lack of depth at edge, it’s high on their radar. What if the draft does in fact fall this way? What if the Steelers are on the clock at 2:55 and are staring at second-tier running backs or linemen on which they’d rather not invest a high pick? Would they take a flyer on one anyway? Or would they put their eggs in their favorite basket and draft a talented edge rusher? Little has not played a snap since the opening week of 2019. Meinerz is from Division III Wisconsin-Whitewater and did not play at all. If I took a back in round one, the best centers and tackles were off the board while the highest-rated remaining linemen (Dillon Radunz, Quinn Meinerz, Walker Little) all came with questions. If I took a lineman in round one, it was impossible to land one of the big three running backs (Harris, Etienne or Williams) at 2:55. If they do, high-end players will be available. It seems likely the Steelers will go offense in round one. I landed one of those players every time through. Najee Harris, Travis Etienne, Javonte Williams, Creed Humphrey, Teven Jenkins, Sam Cosmi, even Christian Darrisaw at times. There was always a player-of-need on offense available at 1:24 in which the Steelers seem to have interest. My wife put her back to bed, but I couldn’t get to sleep again, so I did what any sensible Steelers fan would do: I spent the next hour running mock draft simulations looking for the perfect scenario to address the team’s three most pressing needs: offensive line, running back and edge defender. She was having a nightmare in which a monster from the Scooby Doo episode she’d been watching was chasing her (looks like we’ll be taking a break from Scooby Doo at the Smith house). My three year-old daughter woke up at 4 a.m.
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