With their final pick in the third round, the Pittsburgh Steelers selected former Michigan State cornerback Justin Layne. This is in addition to the team’s free-agent signing of Steven Nelson. What does the addition of Layne mean for the Steelers’ cornerback depth chart?
The biggest impact the addition of Layne will have is on guys like Cam Sutton and Artie Burns. Layne is a long, physical corner with the size to play the boundary and experience in man coverage. Sutton has struggled to crack into regular rotation and Burns found himself benched last season. Layne is better than both players by a considerable margin and is going to make it hard for either of them to find the field.
So where does this put Layne to start the season? Most likely he will be the team’s primary backup cornerback to Nelson and Joe Haden. He won’t be the nickel corner, however, Mike Hilton fits that role perfectly and so don’t expect to see a lot of Layne in there as the third cornerback.
What it could mean is the Steelers play more traditional dime sets with Layne as the No. 4 cornerback. Pittsburgh is woefully thin at safety so unless linebacker Mark Barron can transition back to being a safety for those sub packages, we might see plenty of Layne in obvious passing situations.
