Cameron Heyward knows all about the lineage within the Pittsburgh Steelers, thanks to players like Brett Keisel and Aaron Smith. Those two were the unsung heroes of Pittsburgh’s championship defenses, and they showed him the ropes as a rookie. He had a special relationship with the former, however, whose career overlapped more with his own.
“First would be Brett Keisel”, Cameron Heyward said, asked about his favorite teammates who don’t get enough credit, appearing on former Ohio State head coach Jim Tressel’s It’s All About the Team podcast. “He’s been my big brother through this whole thing. I’ve relied on him so much. I’ve always called him, he is my Obi-Wan Kenobi. He shows me the way. He would invite me over his house. He would spend extra time with me. He would let me pick his brain. I was always just receptive to that”.
The Steelers drafted Brett Keisel in the seventh round in 2002 and Cameron Heyward in the first round in 2011. The fact that Keisel was even still playing when the Steelers drafted Heyward, of course, just speaks to his career.
Even though they came from opposite pedigree backgrounds, however, both Keisel and Heyward had to wait to start. Keisel didn’t start until his fifth season, having previously played on special teams. Heyward only emerged in the starting lineup during his third season.
But Keisel and the others instilled the culture into which Heyward found himself in 2011. Heyward had Keisel as his guide in that locker room for the first four years of his career, retiring in 2015.
“When I first got here, I was the young gun coming onto a team that just lost in the Super Bowl”, Heyward recalled. “It was like, you know, I might not start right away, but I need to understand. I can absorb their information. I just need to be a sponge. A lot of teams don’t have that luxury, but I wanted to be ready for my moment. And some of it was just learning from guys like him”.
When the Steelers drafted Cameron Heyward, they still had Brett Keisel, Aaron Smith, and even Casey Hampton. Smith and Hampton didn’t last much longer, however, just two more years. But Heyward still had to wait behind Ziggy Hood, their 2009 first-round pick, starting across from Keisel.
While Heyward couldn’t crack the starting lineup for a couple of years, he became one of the great players at his position of his generation. At age 35, he is going into his 14th season with 194 games under his belt. During his career, he has recorded 647 tackles, 80.5 sacks, eight forced fumbles, and two interceptions.
Keisel’s statistics don’t quite live up to Heyward’s, but one must understand the schematic shift between eras. During Keisel’s period, the Steelers asked their defensive linemen to play a two-gap technique, which is more passive. After moving on from Dick LeBeau as defensive coordinator, they shifted more to one-gap, attacking play. That is only one reason that Heyward has been so productive, of course. He is still the one making all the plays.
