The Pittsburgh Steelers have wanted to bolster their physicality in recent years, and Ben Roethlisberger believes they did in this draft. Of course, physicality has been an emphasis in their previous two drafts, too. This year, it wasn’t just the draft, but also free agency, and even via trade.
“I think that this draft feels like, ‘We maybe haven’t been physical stopping the run. Let’s address that’”, Roethlisberger said on his Footbahlin podcast. “We went d-tackle first, we went edge rusher, third pick, fourth round. We went nose tackle. We went heavy defense. ‘Let’s stop the run; let’s show physicality’”.
Roethlisberger also mentioned that the Steelers didn’t only get more physical via the draft. You can even look at a signing in free agency like ILB Malik Harrison, who is certainly physical. At wide receiver, they drafted for DK Metcalf, who is one of the biggest receivers in the game. It’s all part of a broader philosophy of imposing your will on the man across from you.
“DK Metcalf, big, strong, physical receiver. I love it. Even with the fact of going with Will Howard, the quarterback”, Roethlisberger said, pointing out the Steelers finding physicality via trade, free agency, and the draft, and all across the roster. “Physical, big, strong quarterback. They’ve been calling him Ben 2.0. You’ve got a big, physical guy there, too”.
Now, Will Howard isn’t the biggest quarterback in history by any means. When it comes to the Steelers, Roethlisberger is the barometer in measuring quarterback size. But Howard is 6-4 and 236 points, which will pass muster. He is bigger than Joe Burrow and Aaron Rodgers, for example, to name just two quarterbacks.
The thing is, the Steelers have been emphasizing physicality for a couple years now. And that hasn’t prevented them from being powerless in the face of more physical teams like the Ravens. Baltimore steamrolled them a couple times last season, and that left a bad taste in their mouths.
You can’t build an entire roster just to beat one team, though. The Steelers are banking on physicality being a winning strategy to beat any team, using all avenues to address it. Now, they probably didn’t trade for Metcalf specifically for that reason. Just consider that they nearly traded for Brandon Aiyuk last year—it’s about availability of opportunity.
But the Steelers definitely prioritized physicality in the draft with selections like Derrick Harmon and Jack Sawyer. Really, you could use that description for pretty much everyone but CB Donte Kent. Carson Bruener in the seventh round—yeah, that’s a physical guy. Yahya Black will live in the middle of the defense, if he can get on the field.
But the jury is still out on whether the Steelers have actually improved their physicality. It’s one thing to assemble the pieces, and another to put them all together in a coherent image. The Steelers know what they want to see, but can they assemble it?
