Steelers Waive Strong Nose Tackle

The Steelers have released big nose tackle Jonathan Marshall during the team’s final cut-downs on Tuesday, the team announced.

Marshall came over to Pittsburgh when they signed him off the New York Jets practice squad last year after a slew of injuries at the defensive tackle position. He appeared as a gameday inactive for those games, never appearing in one for the Steelers in 2022 despite the injuries at nose tackle.

A sixth-round pick out of Arkansas in 2021, Marshall played in 4 games in 2021 and put up a quarterback hit and two tackles. Marshall has been on the Jets practice squad all of 2022 but has yet to be elevated for a game. Marshall registered 1.5 sacks with the Razorbacks over his four years in Fayetteville. Throughout those years, he added 11.5 tackles for loss, two forced fumbles, and 71 tackles.

In his breakout senior campaign, Marshall put up a career-high 6.5 tackles for loss in 10 games along the Razorbacks’ defensive front. The signing of Marshall came after the news that Chris Wormley would have surgery on his knee injury. Like Montravius Adams in 2021, Marshall was signed off a practice squad and came in to provide depth for the Steelers.

Marshall, 25, is in his second NFL season. The 6-foot-3, 310-pound defensive lineman bench-pressed 36 reps at the 2021 NFL Combine and ran a 4.88 40-yard dash with a 1.67 10-yard split. He should have a spot on the practice squad with the ridiculous depth the Steelers accumulated over the offseason. Players like Breiden Fehoko and Adams made Marshall fall the depth chart.

But since he was kept into the last rounds of cuts, it seems likely that Marshall should loop back around and rejoin the Steelers. In three preseason games with the Steelers, Marshall played in 43 snaps, posting one pressure and one tackle over those three games from the nose tackle position.