I’d like to deviate for just a moment from your regularly-scheduled divisional news to briefly cover a team that the Pittsburgh Steelers will not be playing in the regular season this year, but whom they played twice a year ago, first in the preseason and then in the playoffs.
That actually doesn’t narrow it down as much as you might expect because it still includes three teams, but in this case it happens to be the Miami Dolphins, whom the Steelers lost to in the regular season in Miami, a game in which inside linebacker Lawrence Timmons lost his lunch on the field.
According to reports, he is not losing anything on the field in his new defense, as Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald has written recently. The Dolphins’ backup quarterback, Matt Moore (whom they saw in the postseason) told Jackson that he has been impressed by their new linebacker.
“We watch tape every day and you watch him and he is flying around, running to the ball, practicing hard the way you should”, he said about Timmons, in a description that would very much echo was Steelers fans came to know about him over the course of the previous decade.
Timmons, a first-round pick of the team in 2007, called Pittsburgh home for those 10 years, but he returned to where he played college ball, in Florida, out of Florida State. It was no doubt a difficult decision to part ways, but it is a business.
About the Dolphins’ acquisition of Timmons, Moore said, “I think that’s a great addition. The guy is just a football player and you love it”. In another description that should bear familiarity, he said that Timmons “doesn’t say much but plays ball”.
Moore also added that the linebacker “got me there a couple times at the end of the [Steelers playoff] game. He threw me around a little bit; but he’s just a veteran linebacker – all over the place. I remember him communicating well, always talking”.
The Dolphins’ offensive coordinator also said of the former Steeler that “he has a presence in there that he just whacks anything that moves across his face. He’s been an adjustment and certainly turned some heads – literally turned some heads – on the crossing routes”.
That might sound surprising to the segment of fans that were glad to see Timmons out of town, believing that his play was in rapid decline and that the Steelers would be better off without him, but his performance on the field will ultimately deliver its own verdict on that front.
The former Steeler told reporters that he believes he would be able to play any of the three linebacker positions in Miami’s 4-3 front. Having experience playing both mack and buck in Pittsburgh’s system, as well as outside linebacker, it would certainly not defy belief that he could be suited to multiple positions.
