Between the game following Kwon Alexander’s season-ending injury and the groin injury suffered by Elandon Roberts on Sunday, Pittsburgh Steelers ILB Mark Robinson played zero defensive snaps. That’s two-plus games’ worth of work that he was not even part of, in spite of the fact that the team had lost the majority of its snaps at the position in a two-week span.
While Roberts was able to take on a full-time role, it was Mykal Walker, recently called up from the practice squad, who was asked to step in. Robinson remained on the bench until Roberts was hurt against the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday, and he will likely be back on the bench again tonight, with new names being added to the rotation.
“I was just kind of told to be ready to go”, veteran ILB Blake Martnez told Ray Fittipaldo of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Signed to the 53-man roster off the Carolina Panthers’ practice squad on Nov. 21, he has been inactive the past two games, including on Sunday. But the circumstances have changed, and he’s gotten more mental and physical reps under his belt, saying that he will be ready for whatever is asked of him.
“For me, no matter what new place I went to, I have a certain preparation of how I do things,”, he explained to Fittipaldo. “It’s going through the playbook, writing it out, writing out formations, different things like that, going through the checks, whether it’s on a whiteboard or a notebook to make sure I’m ready to go”.
While the specifics of the Steelers’ playbook may be new to Martinez, the process is not. He has started games for three different teams before, spending most of his career with the Green Bay Packers before signing a big-money free agent contract with the New York Giants.
He had one standout season there in 2020 before a torn ACL altered the trajectory of his career. At least in terms of opportunity, he has never recovered since then, waived as a cap casualty in 2022. He found some in-season work with the Las Vegas Raiders around October or so last year before retiring.
But you won’t find anybody on the street with more experience to call upon. A 78-game starter in his career with more than 700 career tackles, 13 sacks, four interceptions, and four forced fumbles across 4,800 defensive snaps played over seven seasons, his resume speaks for itself.
Of course, he has only played about 250 defensive snaps since his ACL injury in 2020. But he won’t get any more comfortable by not playing. Given the issues the defense had adjusting without Roberts last Sunday, I find it hard to imagine we won’t be seeing Martinez tonight, and perhaps in a rather significant capacity.
