The Pittsburgh Steelers acquired OLB Preston Smith and WR Mike Williams ahead of the NFL trade deadline last week, and while both made a big impact in Week 1 — Smith had sack and two tackles for a loss and Williams caught the game-winning touchdown — neither did so in a ton of playing time. Smith wound up playing 23 snaps, but Williams only saw nine snaps, and Mike Tomlin said during his weekly press conference that he thinks both Williams and Smith will see their roles increase in the coming weeks.
“I think that’ll be continual, and I think it’s reasonable to expect his workload to increase. The rate in which it increases, and all of those things, are determined by factors I really don’t know the answer to,” Tomlin said Tuesday when asked specifically about Williams via the team’s YouTube channel. “I’m still getting to know him and how he learns and specifically the detailed component of his skill set in terms of how to best utilize it and position him to help us. And so we’ll be evolving in that way. He’ll be evolving in that way not only this week, but in the upcoming weeks. And I think it’s safe to say the same for a guy like Preston. Less so with a guy like Cam Sutton because we have a shared experience with him in the past.”
With OLB Nick Herbig out, Smith worked behind T.J. Watt and Alex Highsmith Sunday, serving as the team’s No. 3 outside linebacker. With Highsmith out for this week and potentially longer with an ankle injury, Preston Smith could step into a starting role opposite T.J. Watt, even with Herbig likely to return this week from his hamstring injury. Tomlin said he wasn’t sure if Herbig would start or how much he would play upon his return from the injury.
As for Williams, the Steelers were healthy at receiver and didn’t need to work him in before they were comfortable,. When Calvin Austin III left the game in the fourth quarter with an injury, Williams got an opportunity and he seized it, catching a 32-yard touchdown pass from Russell Wilson that ended up being the game winner.
It wasn’t a surprise that Mike Williams didn’t play much given it was his first game with the team and he didn’t have a ton of time to get acclimated to the playbook and the system. But as his comfort level increases and the Steelers evaluate how he can best help them, it sounds as if his role will continue to grow and that he’ll have more opportunities to make winning plays for the Steelers.
Given that CB Cameron Sutton spent 2017-2022 with the Steelers and was with the team during training camp this year, there’s less of a learning curve getting him up to speed even though his season debut came in Week 10. But given how Williams and Smith performed in their debuts, it doesn’t seem as if either of them will spend as much time on the bench as they did in Week 10 (and for Smith, Highsmith’s injury also necessitates him getting more reps). It’ll be interesting to see how much the Steelers work in Williams against the Ravens on Sunday, but it sounds as if he’ll see the field a bit more.
