When the Pittsburgh Steelers selected DL Keeanu Benton in the second round of the 2023 NFL draft, they were looking to add an impact player for the future. Obviously, the Steelers had (and still have) Cam Heyward to lead the defensive line. But unfortunately, he won’t play forever. So they knew they needed to start building for the future.
They did their homework on Benton. Steelers scout (and former CB) Ike Taylor saw him in person at the Senior Bowl and was impressed with how a big man like the 6-4, 309-pound Benton could move. That helped make the decision to draft him in the second round, and early returns have been quite good.
“Man, he’s an up-and-coming talent,” veteran LB Elandon Roberts said Thursday on the Christian Kuntz Podcast. “This guy’s going to be vicious.. He’s a freak athlete, man. This guy’s going to be good.”
The Steelers want Benton to be a disruptor in the middle of the defensive line for years to come. That can be hard against a quarterback like the New York Jets’ Aaron Rodgers. Benton only got credited with one pressure all night last Sunday. But he disrupted things in a different way.
Benton used all of his 6-4 frame to knock down two passes against the Jets. Pro Football Focus had him as its highest-graded Steelers player in the game, thanks in part to those knockdowns, which can be even more disruptive than just pressuring the quarterback.
But Benton is only a second-year player, which is why Roberts used terms like “going to be” when describing him. Benton has a lot of potential but needs to unlock it.
Enter Cam Heyward.
“Keeanu can’t learn from a better person,” Roberts said. “It’s no better vet in a room from a d-line standpoint that I feel like, because I’ve been around a lot of great d-linemen, that Keeanu can learn from better than Cam Heyward.”
Heyward will go down as a Steelers legend when his career is over. He’s played in 201 regular-season games for the Steelers at the time of writing. He has the second-most sacks by a Steelers defender (83.5), only behind current teammate T.J. Watt.
So it’s easy to understand why Roberts thinks there’s no better player for Keeanu Benton to learn from than Cam Heyward. If Benton goes on to have anything remotely resembling Heyward’s career in Pittsburgh, that will be a success.
And Roberts certainly thinks Benton has the potential to be good for a long time for the Steelers.
