There is only so much a team and its coaching staff can do with a player once he is brought into the organization. You can coach him up, show him how to do things, even tailor a program designed around what you perceive to be his strengths. You can tell him how to eat, how to train, how to study, how to sleep, how to lift, what to lift, how to recover.
But you ultimately can’t do the work for him, and you can never fully account for what the player brings to the table himself. Hall of Fame former Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Chuck Noll was somewhat famously not known for believing in the coach’s role of motivator, though there are certainly other ways of going about it that are equally valid.
The point is, you never know when the player is going to take over his own story. And that’s what third-year defensive lineman Isaiahh Loudermilk is hoping to do this season. With two campaigns under his belt, he believes this is the time for him to step up.
“I feel like it’s going to be a big jump for me this year”, he recently told Brian Batko of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “In my head, and I think the coaches’ too, I’m no longer the younger guy. I’m someone they’re expecting to step up. Mentally now, I’m ready for anything. But I feel like I’ll be able to take a huge step from where I was last year”.
Drafted in the fifth round in 2021, Loudermilk showed some promise as a traditional five-tech type during his rookie season. He logged nearly 300 snaps that season and even managed a sack and three batted passes. Last year, for a variety of reasons, his playing time was nearly cut down to a third.
An injury suffered in training camp limited him during the early portions of the season. The additions of Larry Ogunjobi and DeMarvin Leal in the offseason also made it harder for him to see the field due to the depth in front of him once he got back on the moving train.
That train hasn’t stopped moving, and though there have been some departures—Chris Wormley and Tyson Alualu—there have also been new arrivals that could continue to get in his way, a fact of which he is well aware. Pittsburgh drafted yet another defensive lineman in 2023, this time Keeanu Benton, a player he knows well.
The two were at Wisconsin together, though their time didn’t overlap as much as it might have otherwise. Loudermilk helped Benton out when the latter was just breaking in as a Badger, and is now doing the same while both are Steelers.
But Loudermilk still ultimately has his own interests at heart. He wants to play. He wants to contribute. He wants to be successful. He wants to have a job, too. If he ends up with one come September, he will very much have earned it, because he won’t be kept on scholarship going into year three.
