Before former Pittsburgh Steelers OL Alejandro Villanueva became a Pro Bowl left tackle, he served multiple tours of duty in the United States Army following his college career at Army. During an appearance on the military-focused The Team House podcast, Villanueva said playing on the offensive line is a very similar camaraderie to being apart of a military platoon.
“When you play offensive line, you depend on each other incredibly. For all the success and failure of your actions, there has to be someone that works with you and allows that to happen. So on offense you have to work in sync, and I got a chance to play with the same offensive line for seven years, so I felt a lot of the same care and camaraderie between the offensive line and your platoon when you’re eating a MRE on the side of a hill. Very, very similar.”
While professional football and military service and war are not even close to the same stakes, the sense of always having someone’s back and knowing they have yours are the same. If you do something good, it’s a team effort, particularly when it comes to playing on the offensive line. One missed block or breakdown can blow up the whole play, so it’s important to be on the same page with your teammates, just as it’s important to be on the same page and make sure you’re communicating with a platoon while on duty.
Pittsburgh’s offensive linemen got close due to all the time they spent together, as Villanueva noted they had mostly the same line for seven years. With him, Maurkice Pouncey, Ramon Foster and David DeCastro all stalwarts on the offensive line for Pittsburgh. Playing with the same guys next to you for so long and knowing what can motivate them and having their back all leads to that sense of camaraderie that’s incredibly important to have in a locker room and among the offensive line, where everyone needs to be in sync at all times.
The camaraderie of the offensive line helped make it one of the best groups Pittsburgh’s had in recent years, and it’s a group that will be fondly remembered by Steelers fans. All those guys embodied what it meant to be a Steeler, and they clearly cared about each other and always had one another’s back if they made a mistake. While it might not have been at the exact same level of the camaraderie of a military platoon, where it can sometimes be a matter of life and death, it’s interesting to hear from Villanueva, who has the experience in both, to hear how similar it can be.
