Having played 13 NFL seasons, Pittsburgh Steelers DL Cameron Heyward has gone up against many great offensive linemen. On the latest episode of Not Just Football, Heyward was asked for the most difficult offensive linemen to match up against throughout his career by Emmy Award-winning actor Eric Stonestreet. He has played in 202 career games, including the playoffs, and has 166 starts, so there’s a wide pool of players for him to choose from. The two names that he listed were former Baltimore Ravens OG Marshal Yanda and former Philadelphia Eagles C Jason Kelce.
“There’s two guys I really think about that they’re just technically sound that you always gotta be on your game with. It was Marshal Yanda from Baltimore. Dude was just, he could play up and down the line, could pull, was strong,” Heyward said. “You just had to bring your A game. The other guy is Jason Kelce. He was so technically sound where you might have strength on him, but he was gonna be quick to the ball, he was gonna play angles with you, he was gonna use his hands. A lot of the o-linemen you get nowadays don’t really use their hands.
“So those two guys really stood out just from a technically standpoint and they thought the game out rather than just try to be on brute strength.”
Heyward played against Yanda 15 times in his career, including once in the playoffs, and started 11 total games against him. Yanda was already in his prime when Heyward entered the league in 2011, making the Pro Bowl in eight of the next nine seasons. His inclusion on Heyward’s list makes a lot of sense as it would have been one of his most frequent and best adversaries throughout the first half of his career.
Heyward didn’t develop into a perennial All-Pro until 2017. Yanda missed nearly that entire season, and the two only had three more games against each other before Yanda called it a career. In those 15 career games against Yanda, Heyward had 47 total tackles, 31 solo tackles, seven tackles for loss, two sacks, and 10 quarterback hits. He had as many sacks (two) in a 2017 game that Yanda was out injured than he did in the rest of his career games against him combined.
Heyward talked about Yanda back when he retired in 2020, saying he was surprised because he was still playing at a very high level.
As for Kelce, the two only played against each other three times – once each in the 2016, 2020, and 2022 seasons. Kelce was a center, so Heyward would not have been matched up against him as often as a guard or tackle, but in those three games Heyward had nine combined tackles, eight solo tackles, two tackles for loss, two sacks, and three quarterback hits.
Kelce is a surefire Hall of Famer when he becomes eligible. Yanda will likely make it at some point, too. Heyward is on the cusp, but probably need a couple more solid seasons to put him over the edge. Both Yanda and Kelce are more than worthy of being named to Heyward’s list as I am sure they are on the lists of many other defensive linemen around the league.
