The Pittsburgh Steelers trimmed their roster down to 75 players on Monday and it’s no surprise that undrafted offensive lineman B.J. Finney wasn’t included in the list of 13 players who were waived.
Finney, who played his college football at Kansas State, has logged 194 total snaps so far during the preseason and only quarterback Landry Jones has him topped in that stat. All but 10 of Finney’s snaps have come at right guard so far during the in the preseason as he did play some center opener against the Minnesota Vikings.
So, does Finney have a legitimate shot at making the Steelers 53 man roster this year? It certainly is possible and when you consider that he, David DeCastro and Mitchell Van Dyk are the only three Steelers players to log snaps at right guard so far during the preseason, it really makes you think even harder about the possibilities.
Finney is only battling the numbers game and guard Chris Hubbard at this point, in my honest opinion. Hubbard, however, hasn’t been impressive at all so far during the preseason as he has played at both left guard and center. Being as the team has signed Doug Legursky, it’s not hard to speculate that Hubbard might indeed be on his way out of Pittsburgh.
Assuming Legursky makes the final 53 and Hubbard doesn’t, that would leave with the Steelers with eight total healthy offensive linemen pending center Maurkice Pouncey being placed on injured reserve with the designated to the return tag. They would likely need at least one more healthy offensive lineman and Finney would make the most sense, even though he would be likely be inactive at the start of the season.
Should Hubbard ultimately be kept instead, Finney is a shoe-in to make the Steelers practice squad this year. The Steelers like him and we don’t have long to wait until we find out just how much.
