Jack Sawyer: Ohio State Champion, Pittsburgh Steeler, and the Fourth-Round Pick Nobody Should Have Slept On
Who Is Jack Sawyer?
Jack Sawyer was born May 6, 2002, in Columbus, Ohio, and wears number 33 for the Pittsburgh Steelers. He’s 6-foot-4, 260 pounds, plays outside linebacker, and was selected 123rd overall in the fourth round of the 2025 NFL Draft out of Ohio State. His father Lyle played college football at Findlay. His mother Michelle played basketball at Pickerington North – the same high school Jack later attended. His grandfather Craig Shade spent two seasons, 1969 and 1970, in the Pittsburgh Pirates minor league system. “We don’t talk too much about that,” Sawyer told reporters after the draft.
He graduated from Ohio State in December 2024 with a degree in sports industry, mid-season during the College Football Playoff run. He’s a practicing Christian and has 122,000 Instagram followers at @jacksawyer40, where his bio still reads “Defensive End @ohiostatefb” as of this writing.
Pickerington North: The Quarterback Who Became a Pass Rusher
His junior year at Pickerington North, the starting quarterback got hurt. Sawyer stepped in and completed 79 of 135 passes for 1,056 yards and nine touchdowns, while also rushing for 386 yards and six more scores. On the same team, same season, he recorded 13.5 sacks and 19 tackles for loss on defense and was named Ohio Capital Conference-Ohio Division Defensive Player of the Year. Then he tore his MCL in the state playoffs.
He chose not to play his senior season. COVID-19 created enough uncertainty around the 2020 fall schedule that he enrolled at Ohio State early rather than risk another injury for a year that might not happen anyway. That decision moved him onto the Columbus campus months ahead of schedule, giving him a head start on the adjustment that many five-star recruits struggle with.
Four Years at Ohio State: The Numbers and the Moments That Defined Him
Final college line: 144 total tackles, 29 for loss, 23 sacks, one interception, six forced fumbles, 11 passes defensed, three fumble recoveries. He appeared in 53 games and started 29 consecutive to finish his career. Those aren’t borderline draft numbers – for a non-Power Five school, that production sends players to the second round. At Ohio State, surrounded by five-star players and facing Big Ten offensive linemen weekly, the evaluation gets complicated.
He won the Rose Bowl in January 2022, though he was ejected for targeting Utah quarterback Cameron Rising in the first half. In November 2024, after Ohio State’s stunning 13-10 loss to Michigan, Sawyer was involved in a post-game brawl on the field that drew significant national coverage and criticism. The Buckeyes had been favored heavily. The loss was ugly. The brawl was uglier. He never issued a public statement about it.
Then came the Cotton Bowl.
January 10, 2025. Fourth quarter. Ohio State trailing Texas 14-7, Texas driving and threatening to tie. Sawyer strip-sacked Quinn Ewers – his former Buckeye teammate – scooped the fumble, and returned it 83 yards for a touchdown. Final score: 28-14. Ohio State advanced to the national championship. He was named defensive MVP of the game. Across the entire four-game playoff run, he posted 4.5 sacks and six pass breakups. Ohio State beat Notre Dame in the title game. He had his ring before he ever played an NFL snap.
Why Did Jack Sawyer Fall to Pick 123?
The short answer: his pre-draft testing. Sawyer avoided the 40-yard dash and most athletic measurements at the combine. Teams that weight athleticism data heavily couldn’t get the numbers they needed, and the numbers they did get weren’t reassuring. His arm length came in under 32 inches – a real problem at a position where NFL offensive tackles are increasingly 6-foot-6 with 35-inch arms who can keep shorter rushers at distance.
Watch him off the snap and the issue is visible. There’s no first-step burst. He doesn’t win quickly around the edge the way Alex Highsmith does, or the way Nick Herbig does with his speed rush. He turns the corner stiffly. His pass-rush plan in college leaned heavily on power – strong hands, a pocket-caving bull rush, relentless motor – but at the NFL level, offensive tackles who outweigh him and have longer arms can absorb that charge and neutralize it.
His 2025 PFF pass-rush grade was 59.7, ranking 83rd among 115 qualified edge defenders. His overall defensive grade was 51.4, 105th at the position. Those are not good numbers. They are also, for context, the numbers of a fourth-round rookie who played roughly 300 defensive snaps behind two Pro Bowl starters.
Behind the Steel Curtain’s scouting breakdown put it plainly: Sawyer is “a dense-framed, even-front defensive end whose game is built for power but not speed.” Run defense is his floor. Pass rush is the ceiling question. The Steelers knew this when they took him. Defensive coordinator Teryl Austin said publicly that Sawyer’s edge-setting ability was specifically what the team valued – scheme-relevant, day-one usable, even if the pass-rush refinement takes time.
Bucky Brooks on NFL Network compared him to Trey Hendrickson coming out of college: a power rusher who looked like a middling prospect until the NFL game slowed down enough for his technique to catch up. Hendrickson had 13.5 sacks in his fourth season. Worth filing away.
Sawyer’s Rookie Season With the Steelers: What Actually Happened
He appeared in all 17 regular-season games and the Wild Card playoff loss to Houston. One start. Roughly 300 defensive snaps, another 340 on special teams. Final regular-season line: 20 tackles, 11 solo, three for loss, one sack, two interceptions, four passes defensed.
The sack came Week 2 against Sam Darnold and the Seahawks, a Seattle win. His first career interception came earlier – Week 6 against Daniel Jones of the Colts, deflected off linebacker Payton Wilson’s hands. His second interception came Week 17 against Shedeur Sanders of the Browns. In the Wild Card game against Houston, with the Steelers trailing and the season effectively over, Sawyer strip-sacked C.J. Stroud on a Texans flea-flicker attempt. Pittsburgh lost. He forced a fumble anyway.
The Detroit Lions game is the one that changed how the organization talks about him. T.J. Watt suffered a freak lung injury. Nick Herbig was also sidelined. Sawyer started and played well enough that former Steelers quarterback Charlie Batch, on the Snap Count podcast in February 2026, said: “Minus TJ Watt, you knew all the attention was gonna go to Jack Sawyer, and he stepped up in a big way, and he proved that he can be a starter in this league.”
Watt’s own in-season assessment was less guarded: “The more you give him, the better he performs. He’s a heck of a player. He’s getting better very, very quickly.” That’s T.J. Watt, who has seen every edge rusher the Steelers have drafted in the last decade.
Steel City Underground’s post-season positional grade put his line at 3.5 sacks, 22 pressures, and 18 tackles across limited snaps, noting a strip-sack against Baltimore in Week 12 as a particular highlight. The discrepancy from the official box score likely reflects counting methodology – some strip-sacks get credited differently depending on the source. BVM Sports recorded 34 total tackles, one sack, two interceptions, and four passes defensed in their draft class review. Pro Football Reference shows 20 regular-season tackles. Different sources, different scope. The production picture is consistent across all of them: a rotational player who made plays when called on.
How Sawyer’s Game Actually Works – and Where It Breaks Down
His hands are genuinely his best tool. At the point of attack against run blocks, he uses above-average leverage and a quick shed to get off blocks and make tackles. Setting the edge – keeping outside runs from turning the corner – is the thing he does better than almost anything else. Behind the Steel Curtain’s film review noted his ability to “neutralize and overcome run blocks” as his most consistent trait, paired with a motor that doesn’t quit. If a runner is within his radius, Sawyer chases.
The pass rush is harder to assess fairly. Eleven career sacks at Ohio State in two seasons (2023 and 2024) show he can win. But his wins come from power, not quickness, and NFL tackles absorb power rushes with better technique than what he faced in the Big Ten. His lack of bend when turning the arc is the structural concern – a rusher who can’t dip under the tackle’s outside arm has to go through them, and going through a 315-pound NFL tackle with 34-inch arms is a different problem than going through a college sophomore.
Short arms compound this. Sub-32-inch arms against longer tackles means they can initiate contact before he can, which disrupts his timing and disrupts his ability to convert power into forward momentum. This showed up on his Ohio State tape against the better tackles in the conference and it will keep showing up at the NFL level unless he develops a reliable counter move.
Coverage wasn’t a major part of his Ohio State usage and won’t be a significant part of his Steelers role either. He’s a box player. Austin’s defense uses him in that role deliberately. The ceiling question is whether he can add one reliable quick-win pass-rush move – a long arm stab, a spin counter, anything that beats a tackle who’s prepared to absorb his bull rush. If that develops, the floor he already has becomes something significantly more useful.
He’s the polar opposite of Nick Herbig on the same depth chart. Herbig is smaller, quicker, and wins almost entirely with speed. Sawyer is bigger, stronger, and wins with power and positioning. Pittsburgh has both, which gives Austin flexibility that most teams with one-dimensional depth charts don’t have.
The Steelers’ Outside Linebacker Depth Chart and Where Sawyer Fits
Right now, Sawyer is fourth. T.J. Watt is under contract through 2028 and is 31. Alex Highsmith runs through 2027 but the Steelers can exit the deal in 2027 without significant dead money. Nick Herbig enters 2026 in the final year of his rookie deal. Sawyer is locked in through at least 2028.
Steelers Depot laid out the arithmetic in their April 2026 draft class review: Pittsburgh drafted a fourth-round outside linebacker in 2023 (Herbig) and another in 2025 (Sawyer). Both have played well enough to deserve a roster spot on most teams. But the Steelers can’t keep all four of Watt, Highsmith, Herbig, and Sawyer indefinitely. Herbig is the most likely to leave – either via a starter’s contract elsewhere in free agency, or by being allowed to walk because Pittsburgh believes Sawyer is ready to replace him.
Charlie Batch’s position after watching the Detroit start: “I think Jack Sawyer’s gonna be a very big part of this team moving forward.” That’s a former player, not a beat writer, who watched the game film and formed an opinion. Whether Sawyer as a starter works by 2027 depends almost entirely on whether his pass-rush adds a second gear. The run defense is already there. The effort is already there. Watt is getting older. Highsmith’s contract has an exit. The math eventually points at Sawyer whether he’s ready or not.
He might be the most important developmental piece on the Pittsburgh roster right now – not because he’s the best player, but because the decisions around him (re-signing Herbig, extending Highsmith, planning for post-Watt) all hinge on how quickly he can become a starter-caliber player. GM Omar Khan built the 2025 class heavily on defense. Sawyer and Yahya Black were both Day 3 picks who contributed immediately. If Sawyer follows the Herbig trajectory – situational depth as a rookie, rotation player in year two, starter by year three – Pittsburgh will look very smart for taking him at 123.
If he doesn’t develop the pass rush, he’s a high-floor rotational edge who plays 350 snaps a year and makes teams pay for running at him. That’s a useful player. It’s probably not a starter in Pittsburgh’s system when T.J. Watt is across the formation drawing double teams and freeing up everyone else. The Cotton Bowl touchdown, the Detroit start, the Wild Card strip-sack – those plays were real. The PFF grade of 51.4 overall was also real. Both are accurate, and what happens in year two decides which one ends up defining him.
Comments