The Pittsburgh Steelers have recorded 19 sacks as a defense thus far through six games. Three of them represent career firsts for their young draft picks, including two rookies. Fourth-round OLB Nick Herbig was the latest to notch his first sack last week against QB Matthew Stafford and the Los Angeles Rams.
Short of big brother Nate Herbig on the sideline, perhaps nobody was happier for him than T.J. Watt, the former Defensive Player of the Year with whom he has been communicating for years. The two Wisconsin alumni, now teammates in Pittsburgh, are in each other’s ears more than ever, and it’s not a one-way street.
“He just loves pass rush, so we talk, we have an open dialogue about certain pass-rush moves, what we think each other could improve on or do better”, he told reporters on Friday about Herbig, via the team’s YouTube channel. “If we’re trying to tweak a move that one guy does better than the other, we’re always trying to bounce ideas off each other”.
I can’t tell you how many stories there have already been about the relationship between these two pass rushers. “None of that’s for clicks”, Watt said back in August about the fact that they have had a years-long back-and-forth communication well before they were ever teammates.
And while he may sound like he’s being gracious in allowing for the possibility of Herbig actually executing a rush better than him, or taking an idea from the rookie, he almost assuredly is not. The Steelers’ other outside linebacker, Alex Highsmith, said he was working on a move he picked up from Herbig.
One thing is clear about Herbig, which is that he has a good head on his shoulders for his chosen profession. He wants to be great, and he has the work ethic that is required to reach the sort of levels to which he aspires. Watt is confident in his future.
“He’s gonna continue to get better”, he said of the rookie. “That first one’s important just for [the] confidence aspect of it. I think he has a long, successful career ahead of him”. Although, according to Watt, he wasn’t even supposed to rush on the play.
It may not seem like it, but Herbig has only played 67 defensive snaps so far this season through six games, averaging about 11 snaps per game. He has played almost twice as many snaps on special teams, which accounts for some of his eight tackles on the season, including the sack.
Watt’s eight sacks are the second-most in the league up to this point, with two strip sacks. Highsmith only has two sacks so far this year after registering 14.5 a year ago, but he made both of them count, stripping the ball out. Watt recovered one of them and ran it in for a touchdown. And with both of them under contract for the foreseeable future, Herbig is just going to have to find snaps wherever he can get them.
