Ask anybody who ever has to actually play against him and they will tell you that Pittsburgh Steelers DL Cameron Heyward is one of the most dominant defenders in the game today. A potential future Hall of Famer, he is on an impressive six-year streak that he hopes to keep going as he hits his mid-30s.
While he is a lineman who prides himself on having a complete game, there is one particular move that he relies on heavily to win his one-on-one matchups against offensive linemen, and it’s one that pops up on tape a lot. It’s his long-arm punch bull rush that terrorizes linemen and keeps them out of reach—a move that benefits greatly, believe it or not, from an old injury he suffered while playing for the Buckeyes.
“The thing I have an advantage is, I tore my UCL in college”, he told Brian Baldinger yesterday on Inside Training Camp Live for the NFL Network. “I did all that rehab, so now I always have full extension. So now when I’m here, I’m going right here—most guys don’t have full extension. Most guys are right here. I’m using it getting full extension”.
There is ample evidence of how Heyward employs this in practice, and how it frequently generates wins for him. Often, he is essentially able to create his own lane simply by keeping the blocker quite literally at arm’s length.
“That’s Dr. Andrews doing his best”, he joked, referring to James Andrews, the renowned physician who is responsible for conducting surgeries for football players all around the country. The UCL, by the way, is the ulnar collateral ligament located in the elbow, which helps support the joint while, for example, throwing or otherwise exerting the elbow.
Heyward tore his UCL during an Ohio State win in the Sugar Bowl during his senior season on Jan. 4. Andrews performed his surgery a short time later. “They thought that I never would have been the same if I didn’t get the surgery”, he told the Columbus Dispatch back in 2011.
He said at the time that while he had all of his extension back, he was continuing to work on his flexion, though he was getting better every day. Perhaps he never fully regained that flexion ability, which is the reason that he can keep his arm at full extension through a bullrush.
I’m not the resident medical expert around here, though, so I’m not going to pretend to be able to go into more detail than that. Suffice it to say that, according to Heyward, the injury and subsequent rehab process resulted in his ability to keep his arm at full extension—part of what makes his long-arm rush so successful.
He had one of the best seasons of his career in 2022, registering 10.5 sacks with 74 tackles, including 14 for loss, and four batted passes. Since 2017, he has recorded 53.5 sacks, 398 tackles including 73 for loss, six forced fumbles, two interceptions, and 28 passes defensed.
He was named to the Pro Bowl every year in that span as well as four All-Pro teams, with three first-team recognitions. All of this came after suffering his only major professional injury, a torn pectoral muscle in 2016, after which he only came back stronger.
