McCorkle: Alex Highsmith Due For Career-High Sack Season In 2024

The Pittsburgh Steelers have been fortunate enough to have not one, but two elite pass rushers on their roster together for the last four seasons. Alex Highsmith has been with the team since he was drafted in the third round of the 2020 NFL Draft, and has steadily improved in each of his four seasons. He flew under the radar a bit in 2023, at least in the eyes of the national media, because his sack count dropped from 14.5 the year prior to just seven last season. But after examining his stats and the trends over the course of his four seasons, Highsmith is due for another breakout season. His 14.5 from 2022 is a high mark to beat, but I think he can do it, and I will tell you why.

Even though his sack numbers have fluctuated, his pressures have not. Over the course of his four seasons, he has seen at least a 25-percent jump in his total pressures year-over-year. And that isn’t just because he had more pass rush snaps, either. Over the last three seasons, his total pass rush snaps have been relatively flat, but he has gotten better at applying pressure in the opportunities he has. All pressure numbers in this chart are pulled from Pro Football Focus’ charting.

The only season he saw a slight decrease was from 2020 to 2021 when he declined from a 9.68-percent pressure rate to 7.68. But over the course of the next two seasons, it has almost doubled from there.

If you look at the sacks, those numbers are a little more random. He has generally trended higher on his sack efficiency with the pressures he achieves, but last season saw a pretty dramatic decline back down to getting sacks on 10.14-percent of his pressures, down from 26.36 the year prior.

With a career-high 69 total pressures, he was 13th in the league, but tied for 43rd in sacks. If you apply his sacks/pressure rate from 2021 and 2022 to his pressure count from 2023, then he would have 11.8 or 18.2 sacks, respectively. Or if you take his career average of 15.8-percent of his pressures resulting in sacks, that would’ve meant 10.9 sacks for him in 2023.

The point being, for whatever reason, Highsmith didn’t have luck finishing plays even though he was technically much more productive as a pass rusher in terms of pressure. If he can continue increasing his total pressures, then the sacks will eventually follow by law of averages.

Here is a chart from TruMedia that plots all the pass rushers from 2023 with their pressures and sacks.

As you can see, Alex Highsmith well underperformed the trendline for what is expected of a player with 69 total pressures. And, for what it’s worth, T.J. Watt overperformed the trendline.

The defense in Pittsburgh as a whole should improve. They don’t really have a glaring “weak link” on the starting roster at the moment, and that should mean good things for everybody. If the secondary is improved, then the pass rush will have more time to get home. Even a couple tenths of a second that a quarterback is forced to hang onto the ball to allow his receivers a chance to get open could mean more opportunities for sacks.

Year-over-year performance in the NFL has an element of randomness to it, so I can’t guarantee that Alex Highsmith will set a new career high. But I certainly would not be surprised if he did. There is a reason that PFF gave him a 90.3 “elite” grade in 2023.