How much playing time are the Steelers having to replace in 2025?

The Pittsburgh Steelers have lost some significant pieces from the 2024 season. While many of these losses were expected, they still are players who contributed playing time last season. The only way to gain compensatory draft picks is to lose enough players, hence why the Steelers are in position to add as many as four picks in 2026. While this looks like a good thing, it is an indicator of significant loss.

But how much are the Steelers really having to replace in 2025?

As is usually the case, the numbers can be spun in a number of ways. Last week, Gerry Dulac of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette looked at how much the Steelers have lost in the following way:

Steelers now have lost or let go of 10 starters from last season — George Pickens, Najee Harris, Justin Fields, Russell Wilson, Van Jefferson, Dan Moore Jr., James Daniels, Larry Ogunjobi, Elandon Roberts and Donte Jackson. That's nearly 50 percent of their first team.

— Gerry Dulac (@gerrydulac) May 8, 2025

The problem is Dulac listed players that started four games or more (except he left out MyColePruitt who has yet to sign with another team), not players who started for the season. Listing two quarterbacks right away brings the whole notion of “starters“ into question. Having different criteria for the number in the numerator compared to the number in the denominator creates a problem when calculating percentages.

Last season, there were 22 players who started nine games or more for the Steelers. Eight of those players are now gone, which are all the ones listed above minus Justin Fields and James Daniels. That’s 36%. It’s very significant, but not quite as bad as what was outlined above.

If looking at players that started a game at any point during the regular season in 2024, it’s 14 out of 43 players with two of the 14 still being free agents. In all, that’s 32.6% of the players from last season.

When looking specifically at the players who were deemed starters in 2024 for the Steelers, meaning they started the majority of games at their position, the Steelers have lost five players on offense out of 11 and three players on defense. Of the 187 total starts on each side of the ball for the 2024 season, The offense lost players who accounted for 86 of the starts, coming in at 46% of all starts. As for the defense, the Steelers lost players who accounted for 44 starts which comes to only 23.5% of the defensive starts. In all, the Steelers have lost players from their 2024 roster who started a total of 130 games out of 374, which comes in at 34.8% of all starts.

So have the Steelers lost almost half of their starters from 2024? They have not. But it’s not that far off. The Steelers lost 36% of their starters and 35% of their total starts. That is a significant number to replace.

Breaking it down even further, looking at the snap counts from last season the Steelers have a significant number of snaps to replace, particularly on offense. According to my records from data gathered at Pro Football Reference, the Steelers lost players from 2024 who accounted for 5,008 offensive snaps out of a total of 12,419 coming in at 40.3%. As for defense, they lost 2,734 snaps out of 12,012 which is 22.8%. Overall, the Steelers are having to replace 31.7% of their snaps from offense and defense combined.

The bigger question is if this is a problem. With the Steelers qualifying for the postseason but once again getting “trounced and bounced“ in the first round, losing 35% of their starts is not “running it back.“ For those that were looking for the Steelers to make significant changes in 2025, those changes are coming one way or the other based on the starts and snap counts. The big question is if the change has been for the better.