That shouldn’t come as a complete surprise. Just weeks after winning Super Bowl LIX with the Eagles, Slay made his plans public, saying he planned to play one more season and hoped to do so in either Philadelphia or Detroit, the only two teams he had played for before 2025.
He ended up in Pittsburgh instead, where his decline proved rapid. The Steelers’ defense’s early-season struggles — most evident in Pittsburgh’s shootout loss to Joe Flacco and the Bengals — showed him largely unplayable in zone coverages and not nearly as effective in coverage, either, giving opponents a 106.3 rating as the team’s second-best football defender in 25. 58.6 last season, which ranks him 71st out of 110 suitable cornermen.
With the Steelers fleeing, Pittsburgh released Slay and added veteran receiver Adam Thielen this week, trading for a well-traveled veteran and leaving Slay to find a new home.
At this point, he seems tired of the whole experience.
Entering the league as the 36th overall pick in the 2013 draft out of Mississippi State, Slay proved himself as a defensive cornerback for the Lions deserving of three Pro Bowl nods, a first-team All-Pro selection (2017) and an apt nickname: Big Play Slay. A falling out with former Lions coach Matt Patricia led Detroit to trade Slay to Philadelphia in 2020, where he continued to thrive, earning three more Pro Bowl honors and playing a key role in defenses coordinated by Jim Schwartz, Jonathan Gannon and Vic Fangio.
After playing a key role in Gannon’s defense during the Eagles’ Super Bowl LVII victory, Slay began to show signs of age in his final two seasons with the Eagles, a reality general manager Howie Roseman prepared for by spending his first two picks in the 2024 draft on defensive backs. Slay remained Philadelphia’s starter through their Super Bowl LIX victory and openly expressed a desire to finish his career with the Eagles, but the business side of the sport prevented him from doing so, leading to Philadelphia releasing Slay in early 2025.
We’ll see if his brief Steelers tenure is Slay’s final chapter, a quiet finale for a player who certainly wasn’t afraid to speak his mind on or off the field.