Outside of the first-team offense, arguably the biggest star for the Pittsburgh Steelers in their preseason opener on Friday was rookie OLB Nick Herbig, who posted two sacks in his NFL debut. He’s rightfully garnered due attention for it, including from his fellow linebackers.
Though he didn’t play much himself, Alex Highsmith praised his protégé as the fourth-round pick battles for playing time behind him and T.J. Watt. “He went out there and balled out”, he said of Herbig, via the team’s website.
Though we already knew this to be the case, particularly with Watt, Highsmith said that Herbig has been like a sponge, soaking up whatever he can from the trio of veteran pass rushers ahead of him, including Markus Golden. And he’s not surprised by what we saw. At all.
“He’s been rushing well all camp so to just see him come out and do what he did tonight, we knew that was going to happen”, Highsmith said, via transcript provided by the team’s media department. “It was cool to see him out there making plays tonight”.
The Steelers were put in an unfortunate position last year when Watt suffered a pectoral injury in the first week of the season. They simply did not have quality depth behind him, even after trading for Malik Reed just ahead of the start of the regular season. Jamir Jones was little better.
Though they entered the draft with Quincy Roche as their top reserve edge rusher—while also experimenting with some linemen like DeMarvin Leal coming off the edge—the front office reinforced the position by drafting Herbig and then adding Golden as a veteran signing a short time later.
Based on what we’ve been seeing, now including some tangible game tape, it seems the Steelers are in good position to have much better depth behind their two star outside linebackers. The hope is that they won’t need it, but it’s nice to have.
And if Herbig and Golden prove themselves worthy, then they should get a good amount of playing time anyway just spelling Watt and Highsmith as the Steelers try to keep everybody fresh. When healthy, both of them log some of the highest snap counts among edge rushers in the NFL.
That’s the problem with having depth with which there is a significant drop-off in performance and effectiveness compared to the starters when they are in the game. You can’t feel good about giving them a rest if you’re hurting your team measurably by not having them in the game.
That’s the value of a player like Herbig, at least based on what he has shown so far. The word I seem to keep going back to describing his playing style is “sparkplug”. He’s got the motor, the get-off, and the moves. If he can just keep climbing, he’ll get to where he and the Steelers want him to be.
