This season, the Pittsburgh Steelers outside linebacker room looks stacked. Obviously T.J. Watt and Alex Highsmith are two superstar players, but now the team has more depth with Markus Golden and rookie Nick Herbig. Last night, Herbig saw his first NFL action and had a good performance, recording 1.5 sacks. After the Steelers’ 27-17 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in their preseason opener, he praised the defensive veterans for helping him learn and grow.
“I’m just grateful for guys like T.J., Alex, and MG, Markus Golden,” said Herbig in his post-game interview, which was posted to Steelers.com. “Great leaders in the room, Cam [Heyward] Larry [Ogunjobi]. Just guys like that, that are always helping me, helping the whole room be great. After every series whenever anybody came out, they’re right there with the iPads coaching all of us up. So I really applaud to those guys they’ve been there through the whole journey. Those guys really helped me a lot and I appreciate them, I’m grateful for them.”
Herbig has been impressive all camp and with his performance last night, he showed that he can effective in game action too. While he didn’t go against the starters, he looked very good against the Buccaneers’ backups and he showed that he is capable of stepping in in a pinch.
But Herbig is young and still has a ways to go. While he certainly had an impact in the game, which anyone from home could see, he also didn’t win every rep. Now it is almost impossible to win every single rep; if someone does they should be indicted into the Hall of Fame right after the game. It does mean Herbig will have things to work on going forward. Luckily for Herbig, he has a great group of veterans who were helping him in game. Over the next few days Herbig will likely see a ton of help and constructive criticism while watching film.
The Steelers defense is full of veteran leaders who are selfless players, who want to make the team better. Even though it is preseason and a decent amount of the players who played today won’t be on the roster come Week One, the veteran leaders like Heyward and Watt still went out of their way to help them. It shows the great culture Pittsburgh has where the players put the team over themselves.
Next week, the Steelers take on the Buffalo Bills and it will be interesting to see how Herbig plays. Will he see better competition? How will he continue to grow from a strong performance in his first game? Obviously, we will have to wait and see but come practice this week maybe we will see him working on something specific that he struggled with during the game.
Herbig’s career is just getting underway, but it was certainly a successful start. With such an open and helpful outside linebackers room and defensive unit as a whole, Herbig landed in a perfect position to develop as a player and maybe one day join an illustrious history of linebackers in the Steel City.
