What Does Jabrill Peppers Bring To The Steelers Defense?

The Steelers have signed Jabrill Peppers after losing Deshon Elliott for a few weeks to a knee injury. What can they expect to get from the former Patriots stud defender?

The Steelers have signed Jabrill Peppers after losing DeShon Elliott for a few weeks to a knee injury. What can they expect to get from the former Patriots stud defender?

The biggest thing Peppers brings to any team is versatility. He’s never been an A+ player in any one area, but he’s spent most of his career as a B safety in whatever role he needs to play. Peppers can step into the slot, is at his best as a low safety and he’s capable of playing deep as well.

Over the course of his career, Peppers has played around 1,800 snaps in the box, 1,800 snaps as a deep safety and over 900 in the slot. He’s been at least solid in every role, although no one would confuse him for being a ball hawk or splash player. Peppers is reliably sound in his technique and positioning, which has helped make him one of the game’s better tacklers during the course of his career. Over three of the past four seasons, Peppers has a missed tackle rate of less than 8 percent! That’s elite. For his career, Peppers has just an 11.4 percent missed tackle rate. For a guy who has played a lot of football closer to the ball than most safeties, that is an outstanding number.

Watch him follow Mike Gesicki across the formation in motion here, then ID the screen and knife through trash to make the tackle-for-loss on Ja’Marr Chase last season. See how he comes to balance before committing to the tackle? Peppers isn’t going to recklessly fly around, but he’ll arrive quickly and usually finish the job.