Attrition has hit the Pittsburgh Steelers’ inside linebacker room hard in November. Shortly after the loss of Cole Holcomb on Nov. 2, Kwon Alexander followed with a season-ending injury of his own, one that he suffered this past Sunday.
The Steelers put up a good front after Holcomb’s injury, reasoning that they had already been operating with three starters at the position, including Elandon Roberts. All that it meant was that they would have to rely upon a more traditional rotation.
But what now, down two of your three starters? Roberts and Mark Robinson are the only linebackers on the roster. Roberts is extremely experienced, but Robinson is still rather raw midway through his second season. They don’t have many other options. But he does have a particular skill set.
“Mark Rob playing alongside him, he’s a thumper as well, so I think the two of them in there is gonna be a little Bash Brothers tandem”, OLB T.J. Watt said yesterday on the Green Light podcast, hosted by former NFL player Chris Long.
A seventh-round pick last year, Robinson had only recently converted to the defensive side of the ball after playing running back throughout much of his college career. But what he did show in his brief playing time as a linebacker was a propensity to lay a big hit.
That’s Roberts’ calling card as well, and one can reasonably argue that right now the Steelers have their hardest-hitting inside linebacker duo on the field that they’ve had in a long time. Vince Williams could smash with the best of them, sure, but Ryan Shazier wasn’t such a heavy hitter. Lawrence Timmons could hit, but Roberts’ physicality laps his. And it’s been evident.
“You should see some of the practices. It’s like, man, it’s a Wednesday, in-season, or even a Thursday, and it’s like, we don’t have any pads on, let’s just calm down”, Watt said of watching guys like Roberts and the other inside linebackers work this year. “But it’s setting the tone. It really is. And it’s all that old-school football, it’s setting the tone”.
Steelers fans entered the 2023 season with high hopes for Robinson after he played well during the preseason as a rookie and somewhat less consistently so in cameos late in the regular season. By and large, he was not observed to have taken an appreciable second-year leap in his understanding of his positional assignments, which had been his chief drawback.
Back in June, defensive coordinator Teryl Austin even said that the Steelers were hopeful that he could compete for a starting job…next season, in 2024. They expected him to be a project when they drafted him, though, so none of this came as a surprise.
Still, he did earn some playing time against the Las Vegas Raiders earlier in the season, although he did not see the field again until the past two games as the injuries mounted. With potential call-ups for Mykal Walker and Tariq Carpenter, it will be interesting to see how playing time is dispensed moving forward—and how much time there will be for the Bash Brothers.
