Alex
Highsmith.
Alex
Highsmith.
Charlotte· 6'3"· 248 lb· 4.70s 40
"A Charlotte walk-on who led Conference USA with 14 sacks as a senior and was drafted by the one franchise most likely to turn a get-off trait into a starting edge rusher."Pre-draft read
Highsmith wins with get-off. He is the first man moving on nearly every snap, turning a lightning first step into a flat track around the arc. Clemson tackle Jackson Carman called him the fastest player off the ball he had ever faced, and that trait is the entire foundation.
Behind the burst is a real plan. He counters inside when a tackle oversets, uses his hands to escape rather than absorbing blocks, and attacks the ball, generating strip-sacks rather than just arrivals. He also sets an edge and chases from the back side, rare for a converted linebacker at 242 pounds. The limits are mass and length: big tackles who land first wash him out, and he lacks the power to reset a rep once he has lost it.
A 3-4 front that stands him up as an outside linebacker opposite a premier rusher, keeping him in wide alignments where his get-off does the work before contact.
Year 1 rotational rusher and special-teamer behind established starters, with a ceiling as a double-digit-sack starting edge.
A 4-3 scheme that asks him to play with his hand down against the run on early downs and hold the point against 330-pound tackles.
Steelers third-round pick LB Alex Highsmith Charlotte Highlights
Team-produced college reel covering the get-off and the senior-year sack production.
Alex Highsmith EDGE, Charlotte 2020 NFL Draft Sleeper
Pre-draft breakdown of the pass-rush plan and the small-school questions.
Every Alex Highsmith Forced Fumble
Compilation of the strip-sacks that became his professional calling card.
Highsmith walked on at Charlotte out of Eugene Ashley High in Wilmington. He played twelve games as a freshman in 2016 with 17 tackles, then 33 as a sophomore linebacker, a resume that projected nothing. Moving to defensive end changed everything: as a junior he put up 60 tackles, 18 for loss and three sacks, and earned first-team All-Conference USA.
The senior year was one of the best in the country. He posted 75 tackles, 22 tackles for loss and 14 sacks, leading Conference USA in both and ranking fourth nationally in sacks, and became the first 49er ever to earn All-America honors, third-team from the Associated Press and Pro Football Focus. He was a team captain, started Charlotte's first bowl game in program history and drew unprompted praise from Dabo Swinney after the Clemson game. His career line: 48 games, 185 tackles, 47 tackles for loss and 20 sacks.
The evaluation was a classic small-school risk. He tested well enough to be named to the all-Combine team at edge rusher and had a Shrine Bowl to prove the level-of-competition question was answerable, but he was a one-year producer at Conference USA who played at 242 pounds. Pittsburgh, a franchise that has drafted and developed edge rushers better than anyone, took him at 102 to learn behind T.J. Watt and Bud Dupree.
- 01
Explosive get-off
First man moving nearly every snap, the trait a Clemson left tackle called the fastest he had faced in twelve years of football.
- 02
Senior-year production
22 tackles for loss and 14 sacks, leading Conference USA in both and ranking fourth nationally in sacks.
- 03
Pass-rush plan
Counters inside against oversets and escapes with his hands rather than stalling once the first move is answered.
- 04
Attacks the football
Forced three fumbles in college by targeting the ball at the finish instead of settling for the tackle.
- 05
Holds up against the run
Sets an edge and chases from the back side, unusual for a converted linebacker at his weight.
- 01
Lacks bulk
At 242 pounds he gets moved by heavy tackles who land their hands first and can bury him on the goal line.
- 02
One year of real production
Three sacks through three seasons before the senior explosion, a thin sample for a top-105 pick.
- 03
Level of competition
Conference USA offensive tackles are not an NFL proving ground, and the Clemson tape was a single data point.
- 04
Power once stalled
Without the length to disengage, he has little ability to reset a rep he has already lost.
Relative Athletic Score (Kent Lee Platte) benchmarks combine/pro-day numbers against every measured prospect at the position since 1987. 10.00 is elite; 5.00 is average.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.70sp50
- Vertical
- 33inp50
- Broad jump
- 125inp50
- Three-cone
- 7.32sp50
- Shuttle
- 4.31sp50
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | Charlotte | 12 | 17 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 2017 | Charlotte | 11 | 33 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2018 | Charlotte | 12 | 60 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| 2019 | Charlotte | 13 | 75 | 14 | 0 | 3 | 1 |
| Career | — | 48 | 185 | 20 | 0 | 5 | 3 |
Season and career lines from Sports-Reference with bowl games included; the four seasons sum exactly to the 48-game, 185-tackle, 47-tackle-for-loss, 20-sack career total. Charlotte official materials cite 21.5 tackles for loss and 14.0 sacks in 2019, regular-season figures that exclude the Bahamas Bowl; CFBTrack splits the same seasons into separate regular-season and postseason rows and therefore reports different totals. Sports-Reference is used throughout for consistency.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
A rotational rusher who produces in spurts opposite a star but never becomes a full-time solution.
The ceiling: a burst-first edge who becomes a double-digit-sack starter and earns a major second contract.
A tweener without a defined position who bounces between roles as schemes change around him.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Pittsburgh developed him exactly as intended. Highsmith played sixteen games as a rookie in 2020 with two sacks behind Watt and Dupree, then inherited a full-time job in 2021 and produced 65 tackles and six sacks. The breakout came in 2022: 14.5 sacks, tied for the sixth-most in a single season in franchise history, with a league-leading five forced fumbles across all seventeen games. Pittsburgh signed him to a five-year, $70 million extension in July 2023 with $28 million guaranteed.
He has stayed productive since: seven sacks and two interceptions in 2023, including a pick-six nine seconds into a game against Cleveland, the fastest game-opening touchdown for the franchise since the merger, then six sacks in eleven games in 2024 and 9.5 in thirteen in 2025. Through the opening weeks of 2026 he sits at 92 games, 314 tackles and 48 career sacks. In hindsight this is one of the best picks in the entire 2020 draft: a walk-on with one big season at Charlotte turned into a $70 million starting edge rusher, and the third round produced a player good enough to start opposite T.J. Watt for the better part of a decade.