Eric Ebron is not unaccustomed to playing with another talented tight end. While with the Indianapolis Colts, for example, he paired with Jack Doyle. As he is set to join with the Pittsburgh Steelers, he will be working with Vance McDonald, and he is looking forward to getting started.
Having recently finalized his contract, Ebron spoke to Missi Matthews for the team’s website to talk about a number of subjects, and in the midst of the conversation, he began to talk about the position group as a whole.
“I believe this tight end room is great. I thought Vance was a heck of a tight end”, he told Matthews. “I thought Vance was gonna do numbers as well. We all did. It was kind of like written on the wall. Believe it or not, tight ends, we watch each other. We know what he’s other’s doing. ‘What did Zach Ertz do this week? What did Kelce do this week? What did Kittle do?’ We do that. It’s like, you believe in that tight end room”.
Both Ebron and McDonald had career years in 2018. The latter caught 50 passes for 610 yards and four touchdowns that season, all setting or tying career marks. Ebron, with the Colts, caught 66 passes for 750 yards and an eye-popping 13 scores, going to the Pro Bowl that year.
“I’m just happy to play alongside Vance because I know that if we could get into multiple tight end sets and do damage and create problems and take people out of coverages, then it’d be perfect”, he went on about the room. “If Big Ben is ready to play, which we all are excited about, the sky’s the limit for our room. I believe in our room. I don’t think it adds any pressure to me. I think it’s going to be, how good can we really be? That’s really how I think about it”.
Both Ebron and McDonald saw regressions last season, for multiple reasons. Both spent most of the year playing through injury. Ebron reportedly played through an ankle injury all year until he went on IR. McDonald was injured as early as Week Three and ultimately missed two games.
They also both weathered the loss of their franchise quarterback, in the case of Ben Roethlisberger due to injury, and for Andrew Luck, as a result of retirement—brought on because of injuries. Neither of their replacements were able to even adequately replicate what they could bring to the table.
Now with both of them on the roster, and hopefully healthy for a full season, Ebron thinks the duo can do a lot of damage, both separately and together, hopefully to make the 12 personnel package something for opposing defenses to fear out of Pittsburgh.
