The NFL offseason is here, and while it’s easy to skip straight to the draft madness, another important roster-building event is even closer: free agency. Ahead of legal tampering opening on March 9, BTSC will be putting together lists of the top names at some of Pittsburgh’s main position groups of need in the upcoming class.
The Steelers have a pair of in-house free agents and no one solidified at CB2 across from Joey Porter Jr., nor nickel corner. Veterans Jalen Ramsey and Brandin Echols have the
flexibility to play either spot, but the Steelers should be looking to strengthen the room this offseason.
Let’s examine the free agent market. Names are in no particular order.
James Pierre & Asante Samuel Jr., Steelers
We’ll start with the pair of Steelers free agents they can attempt to retain.
James Pierre was one of the feel-good stories of the Steelers’ 2025 season. A former undrafted free agent, Pierre arguably turned in his best season as a pro. While PFF grades are not anything I’d swear by, its season grades for Pierre would back that notion. Pierre’s 88.9 coverage grade and 86.2 overall defensive grade are both career bests.
More tangibly, Pierre played the second-most single-season snaps in his career (408), allowing just 16 completions across 35 targets (45.7%) for 163 yards and just one touchdown. He also added an interception — against his cousin and division rival Lamar Jackson, no less — and nine pass breakups.
Pierre will enter his seventh NFL season and turn 30 years old in September, so his upside is limited. Still, he’s been a reliable depth piece for the Steelers as well as a contributor on special teams, logging just under 1,400 special teams snaps in his career.
Samuel Jr. is a tougher case to evaluate. He appeared in just seven games for the Steelers last year, including three starts, for a total of 249 snaps. Samuel was targeted just 10 times per PFF, allowing seven receptions for 80 yards, two touchdowns, and an interception.
Set to turn 27 in October, the Steelers felt good enough about Samuel Jr.’s recovery from a neck injury that required spinal fusion surgery to let him play. But are they confident enough in his health and impressed enough by the small sample size of his play in Pittsburgh to give him anything more than a one-year deal? He’s also on the smaller side (5’10, 180 pounds) and has a high career missed tackle rate (16.2%).
Josh Jobe & Riq Woolen, Seahawks
The second of three cornerback pairings I’m highlighting, the appeal of the Seahawks duo is obvious. Seattle’s defense dominated in 2025 and was the main driving force behind Seattle winning its franchise’s second championship. However, the Seahawks have several players entering free agency and will not be able to keep them all. While they might find a way to keep one of these corners, it’s unlikely they can keep both.
Estimated values for Jobe and Woolen are varied. The Athletic projects Woolen’s market to be worth roughly $19 million a year, while Jobe comes in at roughly $10 million a year. Spotrac has them each valued at around $8 million.
We’ll start with Woolen as he is the player I think is most likely to leave Seattle. A former fifth-round pick out of the University of Texas San Antonio, Woolen is as traitsy as they come. Fast (4.26 40-time), big (6’4, 205 pounds), and with long arms (335/8” arms), a pairing of Woolen with Joey Porter Jr. would form an imposing outside duo with their height and length.
The question would be whether Woolen is worth the nearly $20 million a year he could demand. During his time in Seattle, Woolen fell in and out of favor with coaches, first with Pete Carroll and again with Mike Macdonald. Woolen intercepted six passes during his rookie campaign, but he corralled just six in the three years since, including just one a year ago. His reception rate (57.4% career, 57.3% in 2025) is still respectable, and you can essentially pencil him in for 10 PBUs a year (38 career in four years). But Woolen isn’t a sound tackler, with an 18.1% career missed tackle rate, and he’s surrendered 20 touchdowns in four years, including six each of the past two seasons. That might not sound like a lot, but consider that PFF has faulted Porter for just one touchdown in his career — and that coming in his rookie season, no less — and it’s fair to wonder if Woolen might be put under an even tighter microscope by opposing offenses.
Then there’s Jobe. Also a member of the 2022 rookie class, he’s practically the opposite of Woolen. Jobe is just 5’11 and 182 pounds, though he has what can be considered long arms (325/8”) for a corner. He was recovering from a foot injury during the 2022 Combine, so we don’t have an official 40-time to convey his speed; however, his ESPN college recruiting profile says he ran a 4.57 in high school. However, while Woolen went to a small school, Jobe went to Alabama and started for two years. Unfortunately, the previously mentioned foot injury contributed to him having a down season— by his standards — as a senior after a stellar junior season. That, paired with his inability to participate in the Combine drills, played a role in Jobe going undrafted. He spent two seasons in Philadelphia before joining the Seahawks in 2024. But Jobe broke out in a big way in 2025, playing more than double the snaps (936) he had in his previous three years combined.
This season, Jobe was tied for the 12th most targets (83) during the regular season. But it wasn’t because Jobe is a slouch in coverage. Among qualified cornerbacks, Jobe posted the ninth-lowest completion rate (51.8%), coming in ahead of corners like Pat Surtain II (52.5%), Drek Stingley Jr. (52.3%), and Denzel Ward (59.3%). From Week 13 through the Super Bowl, Jobe only allowed more than 36 yards once, and that came in the Conference Championship game against a loaded Rams offense. During that stretch, he pitched two shutouts, including against the 49ers in the divisional playoff round. Jobe also only allowed 11 yards in the Super Bowl. And while he only had one interception on the season, he had 10 PBUs.
Jaylen Watson & Joshua Williams, Chiefs
Our final duo comes from Kansas City. The Chiefs are in the middle of a roster reset, and aren’t really a franchise that likes to pay cornerbacks. They just traded away Trent McDuffie, and before him, they’ve let the likes of L’Jarius Sneed, Charvarius Ward, and Marcus Peters go to sign big money elsewhere.
Watson is the bigger ticket of the two, with The Athletic projecting his market value to be somewhere around $18 million a year. Watson is a cornerback in the Steelers mold: a 6’2 and 197-pound press-savvy cornerback with long, 321/4” arms. The former Washington State Cougar was actually selected after Williams by the Chiefs in 2022. Despite being just 19 picks away from being Mr. Irrelevant — who happened to be Brock Purdy that year — it was Watson who emerged to get starts in the early portions of the season, and who cemented that role in December in what would be the start of two straight Super Bowl-winning seasons for the Chiefs.
Like the Steelers’ Porter Jr., Watson was not credited with allowing a touchdown in 2025, and he was only tagged for one in 2024. He’s allowed a 60.2% reception rate for his career, but 2025 was actually his second-worst figure in four seasons; it was good enough for the 33rd-best mark among qualified corners this season, tied with Denzel Ward and Jaycee Horn. Watson also has a fairly good career missed tackle rate (10.0%), though he has alternated between seasons of roughly 14% and 5%, so if history is any indication, it could be a 14% year in 2026. I’m being facetious, of course, 2025 was in many ways Watson’s best season yet, as quarterbacks targeting him posted the lowest passer rating (69.0) of his career thus far.
Williams, a fourth-round pick out of Fayetteville State University, was also a key part of the Chiefs’ defense that went to three straight Super Bowls. He also has prototypical size for a modern press corner, standing 6’3 and 195 pounds with 327/8” arms.
A year after allowing just 196 yards, one score, and a 60.6% completion rate, Williams seemingly fell out of favor with the coaching staff in Kansas City, registering just 17 defensive snaps in 2025, and playing primarily in a special teams role. Nohl Williams — one of my 2025 draft gems — primarily took over his job and posted numbers very similar to what Joshua Williams produced in 2024.
Neither Watson (5) nor Williams (2) have produced many interceptions in their careers, but they both play sound coverage that would be admirable from a CB2.
Eric Stokes, Raiders
We’ll stick to the AFC West and highlight a former first-round pick of the Green Bay Packers. Stokes, a 6’0 and 194-pound corner with 323/4” arms and 4.31-speed, is yet another tall, lanky corner. While his time in Green Bay ultimately disappointed, Stokes reinvented himself in Las Vegas last year under current Pittsburgh defensive coordinator Patrick Graham.
Like many of the cornerbacks I’ve listed so far, Stokes is coming off his best all-around year as a pro. In 2025, Stokes posted career-bests in stops (15), touchdowns allowed (1), yards per reception (9.3), and passer rating allowed (77.2). He accomplished his second-best marks in reception rate (56.0%), yards allowed (261), and PBUs (4).
Stokes doesn’t produce many interceptions — just 1 in his career —, but that may help keep his price affordable. Currently, The Athletic projects his value to be around $10 million a year. Even without turning the ball over, Stokes has sticky coverage, provides outside-inside versatility, and his 10.3% missed tackle rate will play in the AFC North. Could a reunion with Graham been in order?
Montaric Brown, Jaguars
A former seventh-round pick out of Arkansas, Brown might be one of the biggest sleepers in the 2026 free agent class. Brown is 6’0 and 190 pounds with 4.55 speed. He isn’t in the press corner mold like most of our cornerbacks on this list, which could make his fit with Pittsburgh questionable, but he thrives in zone where he can quickly diagnose and react. Most NFL teams play a heavy complement of zone, including the Steelers, however.
Brown was about a league-average player in his previous three seasons, but he took over the starting role in Week 6 and proceeded to have a breakout campaign. Brown allowed just 54.0% of his targets to be caught, holding opposing receivers to just 360 yards, while intercepting two passes and totaling nine PBUs.
There’s a chance that Brown’s 2025 was just a flash in the pan, but The Athletic values his market at under $7 million a year, which is hardly a financial risk for a potentially ascending player.
Alontae Taylor, Saints
Taylor, a former second-rounder, continues our trend of big, physical, press corners that can play out wide or kick inside. Taylor is a tier down in coverage ability compared to those I’ve listed before him — 65.2% career reception rate, 20 touchdowns surrendered in four seasons, four interceptions, 32 PBUs — he has a lot of the same skill sets that we’re looking for. His 18.0% career missed tackle rate is a bit worrying, but his 12.5% missed rate in 2025 was the best of his career and is a much more tolerable threshold if he can maintain it.
What Taylor adds that the other corners don’t is some pass-rush versatility. The Saints under Brandon Staley deployed Taylor frequently in the star/nickel role, building on a strong season of pass rushing for Taylor under Joe Woods in 2024. Taylor has created 20 pressures and eight sacks in 110 career pass rush snaps.
The Athletic values his market at roughly $19 million a year.
Other names
The list of other available names consists of players who, either by age or scheme fit, I don’t think fit as well, but are worth keeping an eye on.
- The player with the most name recognition will be four-time Pro Bowler Marshon Lattimore. Lattimore has battled injuries in recent years — including a torn ACL in Week 9 of last year — and has seen his effectiveness wane as a result. He turns 30 in May and could be nearing the age cliff, if he hasn’t already tumbled over it, but he should come at a relatively low price if the Steelers want to kick the tires and see if they can coax one last productive season out of him. His projected value is around $5 million for a one-year deal.
- Jamel Dean is another player nearing 30 with some name recognition and a history of injuries. Dean is also coming off one of his best career years, but did miss three games with a hip injury after an injury-plagued 2024 season. He is valued at roughly $18 million per year.
- Roger McCreary is primarily a nickel corner but can play outside in a pinch. He is valued at roughly $12 million per year after being traded to the Rams from the Titans last year. He’s a bit on the smaller side at 5’11 and 190 pounds, but he’s a physical tackler with 86 stops across four seasons.
- Nahshon Wright is a tall (6’4), off-allignment corner who created plenty of splash in 2025 with five interceptions, but also surrendered seven touchdowns and 725 yards. Before joining the Bears last season, Wright had played three seasons with the Cowboys, but never eclipsed more than 91 coverage snaps. Despite his size, Wright struggles playing press. He’s boom or bust at market value around $13 million.
- Kyu Blu Kelly is another corner who played under Graham in Las Vegas. Blu Kelly joined the Raiders in 2024 after playing for three different teams during his rookie season. The Stanford grad and former fifth-round pick played just eight coverage snaps in 2024, but had 354 this past season. While he surrendered four touchdowns, the 6’0 and 192-pound corner also had three interceptions in his first action as a starter. A patellar tendon injury ended his year in Week 14 and could delay his start in 2026, so he might be more of a player to monitor in the late summer or after the season has already begun. He’ll turn just 25 years old in May and could be an ascending player if able to return healthy.
- Greg Newsome II’s name will ring a bell to Steelers fans as a former Cleveland Brown, but he isn’t a scheme fit and was traded midseason for a reason.
- Cor’Dale Flott ($7.5 million) and Cobie Durant ($10 million) are cheaper options, but both would play better in schemes that deploy them in mostly off-zone coverage.
What are your thoughts on this year’s free agent cornerback class? Should the Steelers pursue any of these players? Join the BTSC community and let us know in the comments!
