The Pittsburgh Steelers added safeties in free agency, including Jaquan Brisker. Brisker’s run defense, tackling, and pass-rushing are strengths that will hopefully continue with the Black and Gold. There have also been plenty to point out his struggles in coverage, so today I wanted to examine that further from a stat perspective.

While that notion seems valid, examining man and zone coverage data tells a different story. Here are the top 32 safeties in coverage snaps last season, and how they graded in each scheme:

Looking at Brisker, we see he was one of the top-graded man-coverage safeties in 2025. His 74.5 man coverage grade ranked fifth among qualifiers (min. 550 total coverage snaps). He also had a 50 percent forced incompletion rate and three pass breakups, which both ranked second among his peers.

Clearly, man coverage didn’t go as well for Jalen Ramsey last year. He earned a 41.3 man-coverage grade, the second-worst of the study. The other Steelers’ safeties had poor man coverage overall.

DeShon Elliott – 62.1
Jabrill Peppers – 53.3
Kyle Dugger – 47.1
Chuck Clark – 46.7
Jalen Ramsey – 41.3

Attractive potential from Brisker that was missing in Pittsburgh in 2025.

Conversely, Brisker’s 44.1 zone coverage grade ranked 27th (of 32) qualifiers. With safeties largely asked to play zone, his overall coverage was lacking in 2025. Once again, Ramsey was on the extreme other end of the spectrum, with the best 77.2 zone coverage grade last year.

This also got me curious about snap alignments, which is important context. Brisker’s primary positions were free safety (441 snaps) and box safety (370 snaps), along with 142 at the line of scrimmage. Comparatively, Ramsey had 419 at free safety, 353 at slot corner, and 157 each at box and wide corner.

It seems wise to let Ramsey primarily play in zone, where he was much more successful, and utilize their new addition in Brisker as the primary man coverage guy. Yes, Elliott is still in the fold, too, but he wasn’t very strong at either coverage scheme in his playing time last season.

Brisker brings some attractive new things to the Steelers, despite some considering him a redundant addition, considering Elliott. I disagree, and am excited to see what his time back in his hometown of Pittsburgh will look like.