Alex Highsmith

Career arc: a steady ascent to a 14.5-sack 2022 breakout, then settling in as the league's most reliable No. 2 edge.

The arc is 2.0 → 6.0 → 14.5 — a near-tripling year over year as he took the starting job opposite T.J. Watt. 2022 is still the career peak (14.5 sacks, 5 forced fumbles), and the dip in 2023–24 has more to do with role and health than decline. The 2025 rebound to 9.5 sacks in just 13 games (0.73 per game) is right back at his 2022 pace.

He's actually MORE productive when T.J. Watt is out — 0.64 sacks per game without his star teammate vs 0.47 with him.

Conventional wisdom says Highsmith feasts because Watt commands the double team. The data says the opposite: in 14 career games without Watt (mostly the 2022 stretch when Watt missed 7 games with a torn pec), Highsmith averages 0.64 sacks per game — 36% higher than his 0.47 rate with Watt active.

It's not a gimmick year either: his QB-hit rate also climbs (1.14 vs 0.99 per game). Defenses can't just slide protection his way when there's no Watt to swing it back to. He becomes the focal point and still produces — a meaningful data point against the 'product of the system' read.

In 2022 he produced 36.3% of every sack the Steelers recorded — the highest single-season share by a non-Watt edge in Pittsburgh's modern era.

36.3% of Pittsburgh's sacks in 2022 came from Highsmith — a number you almost never see from a player who isn't the franchise pass rusher. Context: Watt himself peaked at 40.9% (2021) and 40.4% (2023). Highsmith was carrying a defense whose marquee piece was on the shelf, and the team-sack total cratered to 40 (down from 55 the year before). His share spiked because the rest of the room collapsed.

The 2025 share (19.8%) signals the rotation has stabilized — Watt's still leading, but Highsmith is no longer fringe-stat: he owns roughly one in five sacks the Steelers generate.

He leads the entire 2020 draft class in career sacks — ahead of Chase Young, Jonathan Greenard, and the second-round name everyone remembers.

Highsmith was the No. 102 overall pick — third round, taken 100 spots after Chase Young (No. 2 overall, DROY). Six years in, he leads the entire class in sacks (45.0), with the second-most QB hits and the most TFLs by a comfortable margin.

Greenard's per-game pace (0.58) is actually higher — he's the more efficient producer over a smaller sample — but Highsmith's combination of availability (90 games of 96 possible) and consistent production is what no one else in the class has matched.

His best game ever opened the 2022 season — 3.0 sacks vs Cincinnati on the day Watt tore his pec.

The Week 1, 2022 game at Cincinnati is the one — 3.0 sacks, 4 QB hits, 1 forced fumble, 1 TFL in an OT win. It's also the game where Watt tore his pec and missed the next seven weeks. Highsmith's career-defining stretch began the same afternoon his teammate's season cratered.

He has never had a 4-sack game. The ten-game stretch from Week 1 to Week 11 of 2022 (without Watt for most of it) produced 8.5 sacks — a 14-sack pace over 17 games.

Multi-sack games are becoming the norm — he's had 9 in his career, with 3 already in 2025.

3 multi-sack games in 13 starts in 2025 — already matching his 2022 peak with four games to play. The career-high single game is 3.0 sacks (Week 1, 2022); he has never had a 4+ sack game, but the multi-sack frequency is what separates the 2022 and 2025 versions of him from the supporting-cast 2023–24 stretch.