The 2023 season will be the 13th NFL one for Pittsburgh Steelers defensive tackle Cameron Heyward and that means he’s played in a lot of games since being the team’s first-round selection in the 2011 NFL Draft. Heyward, who has played in every regular-season game the last two seasons, will now have an opportunity to make an all-time franchise top-five list if he plays in all 17 games this coming season.
Heyward has played 183 regular-season games for the Steelers over the span of his first 12 NFL years. Should he play in all 17 games in 2023, that would get him to 200 played in for his career and would tie him with Hall of Fame cornerback Mel Blount for the fifth-most in franchise history.
The current top four Steelers players in franchise history when it comes to total regular season games played are quarterback Ben Roethlisberger (249), center Mike Webster (220), wide receiver Hines Ward (217), and safety Donnie Shell (201). Webster and Shell are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, as is the aforementioned fifth-place Blount.
For his NFL career, Heyward has missed just 11 regular-season games. The last game he missed was the 2020 regular-season finale against the Cleveland Browns, and he was a healthy scratch for that contest so that he could rest up for the playoffs. In fact, Heyward’s previous missed game before 2020 came in 2017, and that was due to the same circumstance.
The last game that Heyward missed due to injury came way back during the 2016 season and that was a result of him sustaining a torn pectoral muscle during the Steelers’ Week 10 home loss to the Dallas Cowboys on November 13th. Heyward missed a total of nine games that season due to injuries. Prior to the 2016 season, Heyward had not missed a game.
With this being Heyward’s 13th NFL season, he’ll join a list that currently includes 20 players to play at least that many for the Steelers. That’s quite a list of players that he’ll join, and you can see it below.
