Head coach Mike Tomlin was busy this week making the depth chart make sense. He finally acknowledged that RB Anthony McFarland Jr. is no longer his primary kick returner after being a healthy scratch for three weeks. Blake Martinez was promoted to co-starter with Mykal Walker at linebacker. And Keeanu Benton was acknowledged as the starting nose tackle.
That had been the de facto reality for a while but is now reflected on paper as well. He has already seen an increased role—though his snap count was actually low in the last game—but that’s nothing new nor challenging for him. The rookie has no interest in any conversation about a proverbial “wall”.
“Why is everybody talking about that?”, he asked reporters yesterday, via Chris Adamski of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, presumably after a series of questions about the subject. “It’s a mindset, man. I feel like I just started”.
The concept of the rookie wall implies that a player in his first year in the NFL will wear down over the course of the season. Not only is he unused to playing such a long season during his college career, he is also playing at a more intense and competitive level.
The rookie wall exists, of course, in the sense that, yes, sometimes rookies who play a lot of snaps wear down over time. It’s certainly something Tomlin believes in. He’s talked about it multiple times, and about being mindful of significant rookie contributors’ workload to try to maintain them down the stretch.
It may be a bit easier from a workload standpoint for an interior defensive lineman, of course, as they are liable to come out of the game a significant amount in subpackages. Benton, for example, played 385 defensive snaps through 13 weeks, which only amounts to 43 percent of the Steelers’ workload.
He has played 25 snaps or fewer in the past three games, however, even though he has technically started all of them. His 22 snaps against the Cincinnati Bengals, however, can be chiefly attributed to a low defensive snap count overall, as that was still good for more than half. He only played 30 percent of the Steelers’ defensive snaps last Thursday, however, with a season-low 17.
The second-round draft pick has 31 tackles on the season with one sack, six hits, two batted passes, and two forced fumbles. His tape often looks better than his numbers do, with a combination of size, athleticism, skill, and intelligence that allows Benton to win his one-on-one matchups at an admirable clip.
With Montravius Adams finally back for the last game and moving forward, perhaps Tomlin will try to manage Benton’s snaps more. But I’m not sure there’s much point to it. And I’m not sure they can afford to take him off the field that much.
