The Pittsburgh Steelers elected not to re-sign ILB Robert Spillane in free agency last offseason, opting for alternative free agents. They added Cole Holcomb and Elandon Roberts, and eventually signed Kwon Alexander as well. That nucleus worked well enough while healthy, but that only lasted half a season.
In the interim, Spillane signed on with the Las Vegas Raiders and is ingratiating himself as a fixture there. His teammates named him a captain and Spillane compiled a 148-tackle, 3.5-sack, 3-interception season in 2023. He logged 1,101 snaps, which isn’t far from double his previous career high, now finally a full-time starter.
Still, there is one moment for which he is best remembered thus far, and that came in his first career start in 2020. Forced into the lineup due to injuries, he faced the team that first cut him, the Tennessee Titans. And suddenly he found himself called upon to meet 247-pound RB Derrick Henry in the hole at the goal line. While Spillane got the stop, he didn’t escape the effects.
Robert Spillane hit on Derrick Henry zoomed and slo-motion 💥 #Steelers pic.twitter.com/dY15Wp6qEJ
— Steelers Depot 7⃣ (@Steelersdepot) October 27, 2020
“I still feel it to this day. I swear, half my body went somewhere else. Like, it disappeared”, he only partially joked recently on Raiders teammate Maxx Crosby’s The Rush podcast. But that’s not where the story ends, apparently, because he needed to get back on the field. It was his first start, after all, against the team that let him go.
“I was not prepared for it. At first, I didn’t know what happened because Cam Heyward grabs me by the back of my jersey. He’s like, ‘Oh sit, Spillane’s sleeping, get him off the field!’. He literally throws me off the field”, Spillane recalled.
In other words, he was stunned. Perhaps he’s even insinuating that he had a possible head injury. Under today’s rules, if a player exhibits any indications of a head injury, they must immediately treat him as if he has a concussion. He knew he couldn’t afford that, so he pointed, literally, to a different cause.
“At that point, if you run off the field looking wobbly, you’re done for the game”, Spillane said. “So I go off the field tapping my shoulder. They go and check and they’re like, ‘Sir, your shoulder’s fine’. I’m like, ‘Oh, sorry, I just needed a second to recover from that’”.
Surprise, surprise, his shoulder was fine, by the way.
Many may not remember this, but the Titans ended up scoring a touchdown on that drive. Indeed, the Steelers only narrowly escaped with a victory when Tennessee missed a 56-yard game-tying field goal. But Spillane did return to play most of the final drive, so he did manage to get back into the game.
“That was one of my welcome-to-the-NFL moments”, he recalled. “First career start, an opportunity against the team that cut you two years prior. I came out running. I knew it was gonna be 3rd-and-1, give it to Derrick Henry. It was an opportunity where I just sold out for that play”.
It certainly worked out in his favor, because it put him on the map. It’s the first thing that Crosby says he saw when he Googled his new teammate, this Robert Spillane from Pittsburgh. His career has only continued to evolve since then. Now he is an every-down player and team captain, whose new head coach, Antonio Pierce, knows all about linebackers.
