When it comes to EDGE play, more often than not, T.J. Watt is the gold standard for the NFL due to his ability to defend both the run and the pass and getting after the quarterback better than anyone in the league.
This season, though, there might be a new gold standard in the Steel City.
For former NFL offensive lineman and current analyst Brian Baldinger, that gold standard might be second-year pro Nick Herbig, who does his best to mimic everything Watt does on a football field.
Appearing on the “In The Huddle” podcast on Audacy Thursday, Baldinger stated that “in some ways” Herbig is outperforming Watt, which he admitted was a crazy thing to say.
Herbig’s play this season, though, is making it hard to try and argue against that.
“You saw the sound bite and Hard Knocks with [Mike] Tomlin telling him, like, you got to beat the mighty Zeus [Orlando Brown Jr.] this week. And he beat him, and he got the ball out of [Joe] Burrow’s hands and Payton Wilson took it back to the house. It was the difference in the game,” Baldinger said of Herbig, according to audio via the show’s podcast page. “This kid’s got three forced fumbles three weeks in a row, all division games. And. T.J. played well last week, but this kid, in some way, is sort of outperforming T.J.
“Which is kind of, I can’t believe the words came out of my mouth. But I think they’ve got linebackers, man. Payton Wilson, they’ve got Herbig, they’ve got Watt.”
The Hard Knocks soundbite was awesome. It showed just how Mike Tomlin operates on the sideline during games, and it showed that the matchup the Steelers had circled earlier in the week against Orlando Brown Jr. for Nick Herbig paid off in a big way.
As Baldinger highlighted, the strip-sack of Burrow was the third straight divisional game that Herbig forced a fumble. He stripped the football from Baltimore’s Derrick Henry in Week 11, strip-sacked Cleveland QB Jameis Winston in Week 12, and then had the strip-sack of Burrow on Sunday.
That has Baldinger heaping praise on Herbig, who certainly deserves it.
Herbig is up to 21 pressures on the season, including four pressures in each of the last three games. He also has 4.5 sacks on the season and another four forced fumbles. Over the last three games, Herbig has had Pro Football Focus grades of 36.7 against the Ravens, which was hilariously bad compared to the actual film, 93.1 and 91.9.
That has helped him get to a 91.0 overall grade on the season from PFF, which has him as one of the best EDGE defenders in football. Herbig is sitting at No. 5 in the NFL, behind only Aidan Hutchinson, Watt, Myles Garrett and Khalil Mack.
He’s playing some great football right now, and it’s not a stretch to say he’s outplaying Watt, who is drawing a great deal of attention and had been quiet in recent weeks before recording a strip-sack of his own in the win over the Bengals.
Herbig has been an awesome story of development for the Black and Gold, who identified his traits off the edge in college, plugged him into their culture and watched him grow. Hopefully he can continue to be a big-time player as part of the three-headed monster the Steelers have at OLB for the next few years.
