Having a father who is an experienced and disciplined football coach can be a double-edged sword for an athlete. On the one hand, it’s a tremendous advantage to have such an expert resource not only at your disposal, but eager to help you in any way he possibly can.
On the other hand, he might be a little overly eager, overly analytical, overly critical. Whether football dads or soccer moms, parents can be your biggest cheerleader while also being your sharpest critic. And that seems to be the case for Pittsburgh Steelers guard Isaac Seumalo, whose father is an experienced defensive line coach, and who admits that he watches his son’s tape extensively—as both a father and a coach.
“I’m looking for the effort”, Joe Seumalo told Dale Lolley for the team’s website, comparing his son to one of his former Eagles teammates. “Get downfield and see if he can block one more guy. Can you go and block one more guy? I would point to Jason Kelce. ‘Look at Jason. He’s blocking a safety.’ He expects the running back to outdo everybody on the line and linebackers. If he can get to the safety, that’s the home run level’”.
Kelce, one of the great centers in the game today and a likely future Hall of Famer, has been routinely effusive in his praise for Seumalo over the years, including since his good friend crossed over to the other side of the state to sign with Pittsburgh in March.
It’s Joe who is making sure that his son understands that he needs to be doing everything in his power, needs to hold himself to the same standards as the greats like Kelce. He won’t have any teammate in Pittsburgh along the line who is his equal, though the group has certainly improved over the past two years.
Seumalo is a significant part of that reinvigoration of the trenches in Pittsburgh, accompanied by last year’s signings of Mason Cole and James Daniels, and the drafting in April of tackle Broderick Jones in the first round.
Now it will be up to him as the elder statesman in that room to try to make sure everybody is holding themselves up to the highest standards, not just individually, but also collectively as a group.
One wonders, though, what it might have been like if Seumalo continued to pursue the defensive side of the ball before ultimately deciding that he had a better chance of succeeding on offense. “All I said was that our relationship will never be the same if Isaac ended up playing d-line”, Joe Seumalo told Lolley.
Not that a little of dad’s profession hasn’t leaked into his game. As Isaac told Lolley, he embraces the aspect of offensive line performance that gives you a “license to play very violently”.
