It didn’t take long for the comparisons between Pittsburgh Steelers 2022 seventh-round pick Mark Robinson and former linebacker Vince Williams to emerge. Though they have differing backgrounds, they were both late-round thumpers. But even though Robinson is more athletically gifted, there’s no telling if he will have a similarly successful career.
Williams has taken note of Robinson from the beginning, saying even back in August that the rookie “is better than I was as a rookie”. But Williams came a long way from his beginnings. And he cautions that Robinson will have to take similar steps to have a long career.
“I think Mark Robinson can be a very good football player. I think he’s very new to the position, so I think being new to the position is hurting him”, he told David Ribeiro on the Steelers Sanctuary podcast recently. “Physicality right now is his distinguishing trait. It’s what’s setting him apart”.
But that alone isn’t going to be enough.
“As a longtime thumper, in today’s NFL, it is not valued highly, so he’s gonna have to find another distinguishing trait besides physicality”, Williams said, “because that’s not what it used to be. He needs to find something to hang his hat on that’s gonna allow him to develop in other parts of his game, and if he can find a way to do that and stick around, I think he can have a huge career with how athletic he is and how physical he is”.
Williams knew he was never going to be a coverage linebacker, for example. He shared an anecdote about how his college coaches wouldn’t even run him in coverage drills because they knew that wasn’t what they were going to ask him to do. But he learned how to blitz and rush the passer. He added that further dimension to his game, and that helped him have a long career that ended on his own terms.
If you recall, Williams was forced into early playing time as a rookie back in 2013 after Larry Foote suffered a season-ending injury in week one. But the Steelers limited his snaps, in fact shifting to a dime package as their base package. The next year, they drafted Ryan Shazier in the first round. It took him some years before he found his way into the starting lineup on a regular basis.
The Steelers are not going to be throwing Robinson into the fire. Even though they flipped the inside linebacker room over this offseason, they didn’t leave the cupboard empty. They signed Cole Holcomb and Elandon Roberts as starters, but that doesn’t mean the door isn’t open for Robinson if he continues to develop.
Now a football coach himself, Williams is probably right on the money in regards to Robinson if he wants to have a long and successful career. You can’t get by as just a thumper today. The second-year linebacker did have a pick-six of quarterback Kenny Pickett this past week, though, so that could be a good omen.
