Steelers Sign Former 49ers Running Back Trey Sermon to One-Year Deal

The Steelers just signed one of the 49ers' worst draft picks of the decade.
Oct 24, 2021; Santa Clara, California, USA;  San Francisco 49ers running back Trey Sermon (28) before the start of the game against the Indianapolis Colts at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Stan Szeto-Imagn Images
Oct 24, 2021; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers running back Trey Sermon (28) before the start of the game against the Indianapolis Colts at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Stan Szeto-Imagn Images / Stan Szeto-Imagn Images
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The Steelers just signed one of the 49ers' worst draft picks of the decade.

Running back Trey Sermon has signed a one-year deal with Pittsburgh according to insider Jordan Schultz. Sermon originally was the 49ers' third-round pick in 2021 -- the 49ers traded up to get him. But in one season with the 49ers, he carried the ball 41 times for 167 yards and a touchdown. Then the 49ers waived him.

It seemed they signed him to pair him with quarterback Trey Lance, who was their first-round pick that year. Sermon played his final collegiate season at Ohio State with dual-threat quarterback Justin Fields. Lance also is a dual threat, so it stands to reason that the 49ers drafted Sermon to pair with him.

But the 49ers scrapped the Lance experiment almost immediately, plus fellow 2021 draft pick Elijah Mitchell took off, so the 49ers didn't need Sermon anymore.

In 2022, Sermon played for the Eagles where he carried the ball twice for 19 yards.

The past two seasons, Sermon played for the Colts where he averaged 3.5 yards per carry and scored 2 touchdowns. Which means he now is on his fourth team. It's hard to see what the Steelers see in Sermon.

Most likely, the Steelers see Sermon as a camp body who has an outside chance to make the 53-man roster. Running backs get injured all the time so it's nice to have as many as possible. But I doubt the Steelers hope to use Sermon next season.

Actually handing him the ball in a real game is the last thing any team wants to do.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.