it goes without saying that you’re going to be expecting quite a lot, and probably early on in their career, when you draft a player in the top 10. That is doubly the case when you trade up to get into the top 10 to get them. That’s what the Pittsburgh Steelers did in order to get their hands on Devin Bush, and he has been living up to the expectations set forth for him.
That’s been reflected in how they have been handling him and his development along the way. They understand that he has the talent, and the intelligence, to be everything that they expected him to be, and so they know that he doesn’t need to be grilled and hounded.
Last week, his position coach, Jerry Olsavsky, talked about how talented Bush is, and how he tries never to assume that there’s something he can’t do. They ask a lot of him, and will continue to do so at an increasing level as he gets more and more of a footing in the game.
He sat down with Missi Matthews for an interview recently on the team’s website, and talked about how Olsavsky coaches him. “He’s always preaching, like, ‘hey, look, if you mess up, you keep going. You’re a good enough player to adjust and get over that adversity’”, he said. “He kind of doesn’t hammer me too hard. If I make a mistake it’s kind of just more encouraging”.
Good coaches understand that everybody responds to different coaching strategies in different ways. So far, it seems as though Olsavsky has found the right tone that has enabled him to get the most out of Bush through the early portions of his career.
That relationship might evolve over time—in fact, is surely will—but for now, it’s just one of instruction and encouragement, simply making sure that Bush has what he needs each week to get the job done. Correcting without abuse.
The Steelers have had a lot of turnover, at least by their standards, on the coaching staff over the course of the past couple of years, a decent amount of which had to do with the team making the decision to move on. Olsavsky is one of those more recent hires who have made it through the fire.
They like what he’s doing, and, in comparison to last season, he now has the players that he needs to actually put a quality product on the field. The play of the outside linebacker position was highly suspect in 2018, particularly in coverage, which is why they were so aggressive in making sure to secure Bush.
