Pittsburgh Steelers safety Robert Golden made his first career start in the Sunday win over the Arizona Cardinals and the tape shows that the former undrafted free agent out of Arizona played well in that game.
During his Tuesday press conference, Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin was asked to evaluate Golden’s play in that game and it appears as though he saw the same thing that I did.
“I thought that he was well above-the-line and I thought that he took a significant step based on his performance from Monday night, which is a reasonable expectation given that he had a week to prepare,” said Tomlin of Golden. “And we’ll continue to expect him to be a guy on the rise as he logs practice snaps associated with playing with the first-team defense.”
Golden registered 8 total tackles and one pass defensed Sunday against the Cardinals as he filled in for injured veteran starter Will Allen, who missed the game with an ankle injury that he suffered early on in the Week 5 win over the San Diego Chargers. By the sound of things, Allen isn’t likely to practice much, if any, this week, so there’s a good chance that Golden will make his second career start Sunday on the road against the 1-5 Kansas City Chiefs.
It should also be noted that despite him currently being a starter, Golden is still logging all of his normal special team snaps. In fact, he was on the field for a total of 93 plays Sunday against the Cardinals. Golden is the captain of the Steelers special teams.
