The Pittsburgh Steelers have had an electric preseason. A 3-0 record and just about every player that fans wanted to see perform has done so. But out of everyone, rookie OLB Nick Herbig has seen his stock shoot up the most.
When asked what he’s seen from Herbig that has impressed him the most, Mike Tomlin didn’t seem too surprised with the way Herbig has been playing in the preseason. You can listen to the full interview here on Steelers.com.
“It’s not just the game tape.” Tomlin pointed out via the team website. “Those of you that watch us practice, he’s not doing anything in stadium that you haven’t seen with a high level of consistency in practice. We just expect that to continue. He’s getting a lot of notice because of his rushing, but that’s just a component of his game and play. He’s got to be good against the run. He’s got to be skilled and productive in the kicking game. And so, there’s a lot of things that a young guy in his position needs to focus and work on.”
While we have seen Herbig excel during training camp, no one expected him to be this good this soon. And yes, it’s only preseason, but his stat line has been ridiculous. He picked up 3.5 sacks and three tackles for losses, to go along with a pass breakup and a forced fumble. It feels like he’s been everywhere on the field for Pittsburgh this preseason.
As Tomlin says, the sacks are the stat that jumps off the page. But if he wants to contribute right away for a potentially loaded front seven, he’s going to have to do more. And that’s why it’s been so encouraging to see him do so over the past few weeks.
It also helps that Herbig gets to share tricks of the trade with the likes of T.J. Watt and Alex Highsmith. Not a bad crew to learn from. When Herbig was drafted, big brother Nate Herbig used his press conference to push for the team to draft Nick. At the time, Mike Tomlin didn’t pay much mind to those comments.
“I was just getting to know Nate.” Tomlin said. ”I didn’t care what Nate had to say about him, to be quite honest with you. We were just evaluating him on his merits.”
Whatever the reason for his selection, it seems like at least from the limited information we have, they did a pretty good job of evaluating him.
