If you close your eyes and just listen to the pads popping during training camp, it often sounds like former Pittsburgh Steelers standout linebacker Vince Williams is back on the field, flying around, having fun and lighting people up.
Turns out, he is — in a way.
That’s in the form of second-year inside linebacker Mark Robinson, who is as violent as they come at the position. Robinson is still raw to the position overall, having switched from running back to linebacker his senior year at Ole Miss, but his play style and physical traits have Williams calling the young linebacker his “twin.”
Taking in a recent training camp practice at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Williams was able to get a quick second to snap a picture with Robinson, posting to Twitter the photo of the two Steelers linebackers, past and present, giving Robinson the true stamp of approval by calling him his twin.
What exactly does that mean, though?
Well, Williams was a physical presence for the Steelers, a real tone setter in the middle of the defense. So far, ahead of just his second NFL season and third overall season as a linebacker dating back to college in the SEC, Robinson is that physical presence for the Steelers.
Robinson was a 2022 seventh-round draft pick who spent the vast majority of his rookie season as a healthy scratch, not even earning a helmet for special teams purposes. The team already had two other linebackers in Robert Spillane and Marcus Allen who were special teamers. Neither will be back in 2023 as Spillane signed with the Las Vegas Raiders while Allen remains a free agent.
The Steelers were obviously intrigued by Robinson, a former running back with a physical, hitting spirit, spending that seventh-round pick on him and bringing him along slowly. He played in each of the final three games, including technically getting the start in Week 17 against the Baltimore Ravens. He played half of the defensive snaps and registered seven tackles.
That physically and “appetite for contact,” as defensive coordinator Teryl Austin said, got him on the field. As Williams pointed out during an interview on the “Not Just Football” podcast with Steelers defensive lineman and team captain Cameron Heyward around the NFL Draft, the type of physical presence that Robinson brings as a young, developing linebacker isn’t something that’s very prominent in today’s NFL.
Gone are the days of the big-hitting linebackers as the league instead focuses on the smaller, shiftier linebackers to cover ground in the run and pass game. Robinson brings ability in both instances as that physical downhill presence but also that athletic linebacker who can play in space the more he develops.
But Williams sees that style in Robinson, which has drawn the former Steelers linebacker who held down a starting role in the middle of the Steelers’ defense for seven of his eight seasons in the Black and Gold to the young Pittsburgh linebacker. Williams believes that for Robinson to take the next step, he has to really take his game to a new level between the ears.
The physicality part though, that’s there.
