Player: OLB Nick Herbig
Stock Value: Up
Reasoning: Following another big preseason, the Steelers have a good problem on their hands: finding Nick Herbig snaps. The second-year outside linebacker looks too good to keep on the bench, even if they have two great starters already. Herbig can only strengthen the Steelers by keeping T.J. Watt and Alex Highsmith fresher, taking some work off their plates.
At this point I think some people are more excited about Nick Herbig than they are about T.J. Watt. One is the best defensive player in football, but the other is the young up and comer hopefully following in his footsteps.
Now, the odds are against Herbig ever reaching Watt’s level, which is transcendent and bound for the Hall of Fame. The Steelers probably don’t have two future Canton pass rushers on the roster together right now. But that doesn’t mean Herbig isn’t really exciting.
A fourth-round pick, Nick Herbig produced three sacks, five tackles for loss, and two forced fumbles on 191 snaps in 2023. He had a great preseason last year and then had another one this year, only raising the expectations. Even head coach Mike Tomlin acknowledged that you have to find snaps for a player like that.
Predictions of Herbig’s continued emergence quite possibly affected the Steelers’ personnel decisions. At no point this offseason did they seemingly make any effort to acquire another significant pass rusher. They had Markus Golden last year, and they did bring him back in training camp this year before he retired. But one wonders if he didn’t retire because he got the impression that he would be stuck behind Herbig and not even dressing for games barring injury.
One of Nick Herbig’s many great qualities is the fact that he is comfortable playing left or right. That means he can just as easily spell Alex Highsmith as he can T.J. Watt, and the Steelers will certainly take advantage of that.
They even toyed with using Herbig with the starters in a three-rusher package. That’s when you really know that you have three pass rushers, when you orchestrate ways to play them all. We’ll have to see if they actually bring that out into the regular season, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
As the season progresses, Steelers players’ stocks rise and fall. The nature of the evaluation differs with the time of year, with in-season considerations being more often short-term. Considerations in the offseason often have broader implications, particularly when players lose their jobs, or the team signs someone. This time of year is full of transactions, whether minor or major.
A bad game, a new contract, an injury, a promotion—any number of things affect a player’s value. Think of it as a stock on the market, based on speculation. You’ll feel better about a player after a good game, or worse after a bad one. Some stock updates are minor, while others are likely to be quite drastic, so bear in mind the degree. I’ll do my best to explain the nature of that in the reasoning section of each column.
