Whatever the news is about Pittsburgh Steelers veteran DL Cameron Heyward is, whether today or tomorrow, it’s not going to be good. Exiting the season opener with a groin injury, there is a chance he could be facing surgery, but the odds of him not at least landing on the Reserve/Injured List are slim to none.
Accordingly, that means others will have to step up for at least the next four games. My personal choice for that assignment, and perhaps the choice of the coaching staff as well, is rookie second-round pick Keeanu Benton, who played 29 snaps in his NFL debut out of 68 in total.
And he played quite well, I might add. Kind of the way you would hope a top-50 draft pick might look when he is on the field. Benton told reporters yesterday that he has already gotten the talk about what is going to be expected of him in light of Heyward’s injury.
“We talked about that, and kind of talked to Coach about that a little last night, basically telling me I’ve got to grow up fast and be ready to go out there and play”, he said from the locker room yesterday, via the Steelers’ website.
While we can’t definitively identify who he might have been referring to as ‘Coach’, teams will generally use that term to refer to their head coaches unless the specific context suggests another. I’m assuming he is referring, then, to head coach Mike Tomlin, who is known for making his expectations clear for all of his players, particularly rookies.
The Steelers are no strangers to playing rookies extensively, though they didn’t manage to put any of them in the starting lineup this year. Despite the fact that five of their six healthy rookies made it into Sunday’s game, they were all reserves, including 14th-overall T Broderick Jones and CB Joey Porter Jr., selected 32nd.
Of the higher draft picks, Benton along the defensive line plays the position easiest to gain a role, since you are naturally going to rotate defensive linemen. You do no rotate offensive tackles if you don’t have to, nor do you typically do so with cornerbacks.
Benton was already going to play, but he could be in for a feature, starting role beginning in the second game of his career and lasting until the end of his career. At least that’s the kind of talent the Steelers saw in him when they drafted him, and frankly, ever since he put the pads on, he’s looked the part.
The rookie was one of the few bright spots in an ugly 30-7 thumping by the San Francisco 49ers in the Steelers’ season opener. Although he didn’t blow up the traditional stat sheet, registering two tackles (both of them against the run), he won in ways that are less obvious and which are likely more predictive of future success.
