Mike's Beer Bar War Room: Jack of all trades, master at inside linebacker

The Steelers wasted little time signing linebacker Myles Jack following his release in a salary cap-cutting move by the Jaguars earlier this year.

What are the Steelers getting in Jack, and how does he fit in with his new team? 

Let's take a look.

The Steelers signed Jack to a 2-year, $16-million contract that includes a $6.5-million signing bonus. But Jack’s base salary this year is just $1.5 million, and he is set to make $8 million next year. Jack won’t turn 27-years-old until September but has six years of NFL experience under his belt.

Jack was a rare prospect coming out of UCLA. Before he enrolled in college, Jack excelled as a track runner and on the football field at running back and then playing both linebacker and running back to finish up his college career. Jack went to UCLA as a linebacker, but his new team realized that he was a rare young player on both sides of the ball. His true freshman year in 2013, he won PAC-10 Defensive Freshman of the Year honors AND the PAC-10 Offensive Freshman of the Year award.

Jack concentrated on becoming an incredibly versatile defensive player at UCLA but did finish his three-year stint in college with 387 rushing yards. Jack scored 11 touchdowns as an offensive player for the Bruins.

On defense, Jack was a terror with uncommon traits and usage. The Bruins often asked Jack to cover much smaller slot receivers and even aligned him as an outside cornerback at times, often in man coverage at over 240 pounds. Jack was the top player on his college defense pretty much the day he arrived and was a huge tone setter on the field for UCLA. 

His range and explosive traits were impossible to ignore as his college coaches asked Jack to basically do everything you can imagine. His offensive experience was obvious in Jack’s quick ability to diagnose plays. He was all over the field at the college level. 

But Jack’s junior season was ended abruptly when Jack tore his meniscus in his knee. He played just three games that year and never suited up for UCLA again, declaring early for the 2016 NFL Draft. 

Most expected Jack to be selected in the first round because of his outstanding college tape, but he fell to the 36th overall selection to Jacksonville. Most cited his knee injury as the reason for this fall outside of the first round. Other than the bench press, Jack didn’t work out at the NFL Scouting Combine, but did perform some events at UCLA’s pro day even though he was likely not yet 100 percent. 

Jack still jumped well over 10 feet in the broad jump and posted a whopping 40-inch vertical while weighing in at 245 pounds. Jack has a leaner lower body, but he has long arms and great size and bulk overall. 

As is the case with many do-it-all defenders (think Isaiah Simmons and Zaven Collins in Arizona), the prospect’s new team still must figure out the nuts and bolts of the player’s abilities and then build from there. A mistake is often made by asking young players such as Jack to consume too much on their plate. Jacksonville made that mistake early on with Jack, but then he flourished. 

The Jaguars were so happy with Jack’s start to his career that they awarded him with a four-year, $57-million contract with $33 million guaranteed in 2019. Playing on that new contract, Jack started 30 games over the past two seasons. 

The Jaguars new coaching staff wanted new faces. Jacksonville replaced Jack with a big free agent signing (Foyesade Oluokun on a three-year, $45-million contract) as well as two early draft picks, Devin Lloyd in the first round and Chad Muma in the third. 

In terms of his knee, Jack has been held out of some Wednesday practices over the past six years in Jacksonville, but he has also played 89 of a possible 96 NFL games. He logged over 900 snaps in each of the past two seasons and has recorded 1,000 snaps in a season twice as well. 

Jack shows great big-play potential, but during those six years with the Jaguars he has only recorded 6.5 sacks, three interceptions and two forced fumbles. The Steelers will be expecting more game-changing plays from their new acquisition, and this is clearly a much better environment for doing so than what Jack dealt with in Jacksonville, a team in constant flux. 

In a dysfunctional situation last year, Jack’s coverage dropped off quite a bit. But his first five years in the league as well as his college tape implies that Jack should immediately be the Steelers' best coverage player on the second level of the defense:

He also is a plus blitzer, though an inconsistent tackler. Despite Jack’s immense physical gifts and many stretches of play at a very high level, he hasn’t quite put it all together to this point. That could still be on the horizon in his new and much better situation. 

Jack will be counted on for an every-down role as well as taking responsibilities off Devin Bush’s plate and potentially acting as a player Bush can learn from. 

Despite last year’s struggles, it would come as a huge surprise if Jack didn’t greatly improve the Steelers linebacker play. Last year’s substantial snap counts for the Steelers linebackers are as follows: Joe Schobert with 921 snaps in 16 games, Bush playing 762 snaps in his 14 games played and Robert Spillane seeing the field for 347 plays.

With their trio of safeties, Minkah Fitzpatrick, Terrell Edmunds and Damontae Kazee along with the three cornerbacks who are expected to be in the nickel package -- Cameron Sutton, Levi Wallace and Ahkello Witherspoon -- the Steelers might choose to play a higher percentage of dime defense with these six defensive backs on the field together. With a four-man front, this would leave just one linebacker spot in use in their dime package, presumably for Jack. 

Bush is at a crossroads of his career, but the same can also be said of Jack. The Steelers have zero contractional attachment to Bush after this season and the structuring of Jack’s contract would allow the team to part ways with him with little consequence if Jack doesn’t work out in 2022. 

Conceivably, the Steelers could have two new starting inside linebackers next year. But more likely, they solved at least one of those two spots with the addition of Jack.