What does the number 28 have to do with the 2020 Steelers? Well, sure, it might be the route some take to get to Heinz Field on Sundays. Opponents are averaging just a shade over 28 yards per drive against them, but that's not it. T.J. Watt has 28 quarterback hits, by far the most in the NFL, and yet not what we're looking for. It's also the jersey worn by corner Mike Hilton, whose absence for four games in a row has opened the door for some young players to get their next-man-up audition in live action, and now we're getting warmer ...
Through nine games, the Steelers already have used 28 players on defense this season. If that seems like a lot, consider that it's tied for the most since the NFL began keeping track of the stat in 1995. The 2013 squad was a bit of a mess, don't you recall?
The numbers usually don't vary all that much from team to team in a given year — or from year to year with a given team — but the Steelers almost always rank near the bottom of the NFL in players trusted to take snaps on defense. If they value stability at the top of the organization, they value it everywhere, as evidenced by shying away from a revolving door in defensive coordinator Keith Butler's unit.
As we know, though, injuries happen. Trades happen. In 2020, practice squad call-ups happen quite often. And in Sunday's 36-10 rout of Cincinnati, garbage time happened, allowing the Steelers to get some in-game reps for three relatively players new to their defense: rookie defensive backs Antoine Brooks and James Pierre, plus newly acquired inside linebacker Avery Williamson.
"Coach (Mike) Tomlin, he always tells us just to be ready," said starting safety Terrell Edmunds, who's been a mainstay since he arrived as a first-round pick in 2018. "You never know when your number's going to be called."
On Monday, Edmunds was talking specifically about Brooks, who played 28 defensive snaps against the Bengals without having one to his name before being signed to the active coming into that game. But Edmunds also could've been making that point about plenty of others as the Steelers deal with more missing pieces than usual on their defense.
Yes, linebacker Devin Bush is the only defensive contributor to be lost for the season so far, but the defensive line lost nose tackle Tyson Alualu for one game and most of another. One of his backups, Chris Wormley, is on injured reserve (though likely to return). And with the Bengals coming to town, second-year defensive lineman Isaiah Buggs, who'd been filling in for Alualu, was sidelined with an ankle injury that kept him limited in practice.
Even in Bush's position group, second-year backup Ulysees Gilbert is on injured reserve himself with a back injury. Williamson then got the call to help shore up the depth behind Vince Williams and Robert Spillane, though he figures to eventually see more than the 11 snaps he got in mop-up duty Sunday as the clock wound down.
Then there's the secondary, where the Steelers have to knock on wood and consider themselves fortunate that Edmunds, Minkah Fitzpatrick, Joe Haden and Steven Nelson haven't missed a snap due to injury since the season started. But Hilton has, and while that domino effect has thrust players like Brooks, Marcus Allen and Justin Layne into gameday roles, it's been Cameron Sutton who has stepped up admirably at Hilton's slot corner spot.
"I just want to play, I just want to ball," Sutton said Monday. "That's it."
Sutton has been playing — a season-high 50 snaps in Week 10 — and he's been balling, with a forced fumble for the third game in a row, the longest active streak in the NFL.
But fourth-year veterans such as Sutton getting a bigger piece of the pie is one thing. The matter of players such as Henry Mondeaux and Carlos Davis on the defensive line, or Brooks and Layne in the secondary, or even Spillane at linebacker, becoming a factor at all is not a development many could have foreseen. Unless, of course, you're in their world.
"What do you mean, 'Did we know that they could potentially help us?'" defensive line coach Karl Dunbar asked rhetorically last week, taking a bit of offense to that question. "They're on the team for a reason. They're backups, and they got called to duty."
Indeed, the stats say the Steelers defense is calling those backups into duty more than ever this year (they used 26 players on defense in 2019). Not always asking them to do a lot, not always asking them to come back next week, but in this touch-and-go year of all touch-and-go years, if you're in that room, you better be ready.
Now, if the Steelers have to use 43 players on defense like the Miami Dolphins did last season, something will have gone horribly wrong. Otherwise, the practice squad guys and active roster reserves just have incentive to keep doing everything right.
"It's preached within, through the team — not just through our position group — to hold yourself to a standard, have expectations for yourself," Sutton said. "When you have smart and tough players who are willing to come in and listen, you can point them in the right direction, take criticism and still be productive."
