Exit Meeting: DL Esezi Otomewo
Experience: 4 Years
A pending restricted free agent, Esezi Otomewo has re-signed with the Steelers on a one-year contract after developing last season. Originally signed a year ago, he started to earn playing time late in 2025. The coaches saw enough from his tape that they wanted him back to continue working with him.
The Steelers have been trying to reinvigorate the defensive line for the past few years. They drafted Keeanu Benton in 2023, but they took their biggest swing last year. They drafted Derrick Harmon in the first round, followed by Yahya Black in the fifth. Prior to that, they added Daniel Ekuale and Otomewo in free agency.
Ekuale went down with an injury, as did Dean Lowry and Isaiahh Loudermilk. Those injuries all played a role in Otomewo seeing the field, and increasingly so, as the season progressed. In all, he played a career-high 173 snaps across 12 games, almost doubling his prior career total. He registered 9 tackles, including 1 for loss, with 1 sack and 1 quarterback hit. In the postseason, he added another two tackles to his total.
Going into the 2026 season, the Steelers currently have Cam Heyward, Benton, Harmon, and Black as their defensive line locks. Esezi Otomewo returns as a strong candidate to make the roster again, but that isn’t set in stone. It will depend on how the team addresses the group going forward, and we can’t rule anything out just yet.
For one thing, we don’t know for sure how the Steelers feel about Keeanu Benton’s future. He is due for an extension this offseason, but will they sign him to one? Would the new coaching staff want him to play out his contract and see if he earns a new deal? In the meantime, they still have to flesh out the depth chart.
That’s where guys like Esezi Otomewo show up. You don’t game plan to have him as a starter, but he showed the Steelers last season that he can play. And he grew in his craft as the season progressed, showing he can take coaching. Now he has a new set of coaches, though. He may be in the same locker room, but in many ways he’s starting over yet again.
The Pittsburgh Steelers find themselves licking their wounds after yetanother early playoff exit. This is a repeated pattern for the organization, but with major change coming. As the Steelers conduct their own exit meetings, we willgo down the roster conducting our own. Who should stay, and who should go, and how? Who should expect a bigger role next season, and who might deserve a new contract? The resignation of Mike Tomlin makes those questions much more difficult to answer, but much more important. We’ll explore those questions and more in these articles, part of an annual series.
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