DL Cameron Heyward isn’t a captain of the Pittsburgh Steelers simply by virtue of seniority. He earned that distinction through years of consistent displays of leadership. We got a glimpse of that on the sidelines thanks to last night’s edition of Inside the NFL on The CW with Ryan Clark.
The broadcast showed a moment following ILB Kwon Alexander’s Achilles injury that knocked him out of the game and Mark Robinson into it. The inexperienced second-year player suddenly found himself thrust into a role of greater responsibility than he had been prepared for, but Heyward had some words for him.
“Hey, we ain’t gonna put it all on your plate, but we need you to talk”, he said to the young linebacker on the sideline in between series. “We all got to communicate on the same level, so we’re gonna be screaming just like you. Alright?”.
Robinson ended up playing 41 snaps Sunday against the Green Bay Packers, nearly matching the total number of snaps he played all of his rookie season a year ago. He finished the game with three tackles. But he was just one component of the chain of communication, and the whole unit got the speech as well.
“Everybody’s got to repeat the call”, he said. “We gotta get that s— in and out. If we don’t get that s— we’re f—ed, right? So, we gotta overcommunicate now, right? Make sure we talk about that s—. Everybody’s gotta hold signals up. Keep working that s— every time, alright?”.
As they say, it’s better for everybody to be wrong then for half to be wrong, because at least if everybody is wrong in the same way, you’re running the same play. It’s imperative for the signal-caller to clearly communicate the play from the sideline, but then it’s on everybody else to disseminate that information throughout the entire unit, and then communicate any needed adjustments from there.
Clearly, though, it’s not easy. Communication is a struggle for every team in the league—especially when your opponent wants to catch you off-guard deliberately and deprive you of the opportunity to communicate. That’s one of the reasons pre-snap motion is so prominent, because it stresses the defense’s ability to adjust rapidly and appropriately.
The communication could be better this year on the whole, but you can find the excuses if you want. From the very beginning, the Steelers have been working with new signal-callers after gutting their inside linebacker room. Then they lost Cole Holcomb, and then they lost Alexander. On top of that, Heyward, one of the prime communicators, missed six of the nine games they’ve played so far. S Minkah Fitzpatrick has missed the better part of the past three games.
Then you have rookies in the lineup, including CB Joey Porter Jr., now a full-time starter. You have long-time veterans like S Terrell Edmunds and CB Cameron Sutton gone, both rock-solid communicators who were replaced by new or relatively new faces. Clear communication comes with familiarity, and this defense hasn’t fully had the chance to settle into that familiar groove this year. That just means leadership from people like Heyward will be even more critical.
