On a Steelers defense that started the season with eight first-round picks healthy and starting, a couple of no-round draft picks who used to talk to each other about this opportunity have had their numbers called.
Henry Mondeaux and Robert Spillane lived together last year as members of the Steelers practice squad, essentially going week to week on the fringes of the NFL, always one injury away from being bumped up or bumped out of the NFL. But there must have been something about their dinner table conversations, because a season later, both find themselves contributing on defense for the only unbeaten team in the NFL.
Improbable? Sure. Unexpected? Maybe not quite.
"I would've told you that it's maybe unlikely from a fan's perspective, but we were talking about moments like this all last year," Mondeaux said of himself and Spillane. "It's been part of our plan — doing what we can, stepping into games."
Mondeaux and Spillane both went undrafted in 2018 and fizzled out with other franchises before the Steelers took a liking to them. They were two of 10 players to make the initial practice squad last season, and while Spillane was eventually promoted to the active roster to help on special teams, Mondeaux never got there in 2019.
Three weeks ago, ahead of an unbeaten matchup with Tennessee, the Steelers finally signed the 6-foot-4, 280-pound defensive lineman to their 53-man roster. Like Spillane, he was promoted to be another body on special teams, but he ended up playing six snaps on defense. The past two weeks, he's been on the field for 19 and 15 defensive snaps, due to injuries to nose tackle Tyson Alualu and veteran reserve Chris Wormley.
"It's what guys on our team prepare for if they're not in the positions they are when the season starts," Mondeaux said. "They're all getting ready."
For Mondeaux (pronounced mon-dew), his position was as deep as any on the roster coming into the year. Cam Heyward and Stephon Tuitt are All-Pro type stalwarts, Alualu is as versatile as he is experienced, and Wormley was brought in via trade just this past offseason. Beyond those four, Isaiah Buggs was a sixth-round pick a year ago and Carlos Davis was the team's seventh-rounder this year.
Buggs and Davis, too, have been thrust into bigger roles than most would have anticipated. After losing his spot in the lineup to Mondeaux for the Titans game, Buggs has played 40% of the defensive snaps the last two weeks in place of Alualu. Davis was active Sunday for the first time and saw 16 snaps on defense, even notching a tackle for loss on a tight end screen by the Cowboys.
"Whether it's on the practice squad or in an inactive spot, we try to get guys ready to play," Mondeaux said. "I don't think anyone bats an eye when people go down."
While Mondeaux and Davis are just getting their first tastes of life in the NFL — and doing it against the likes of Derrick Henry, Lamar Jackson and Ezekiel Elliott — Spillane is now playing more and more each week. That could change starting Sunday against Cincinnati with the integration of new linebacker Avery Williamson, but it's easy to see Spillane has surpassed even what his coaches thought they would get out of him.
In Nashville, Mike Tomlin acknowledged that he didn't want Spillane playing more than three-fourths of the time in his first NFL start. At Baltimore, that snap share went up to 83%, and at Dallas, he was in for all but five downs on defense, matching up at times with Elliott out of the backfield.
"When they say I'm too undersized to play linebacker, I want to show that I'm big enough," Spillane said last week. "When they say I'm not fast enough to cover somebody, I want to show that I can cover people. When they say that I'm not aware enough, I want to show I can be an aware player. It's just those things that motivate me inside and always have."
It's that kind of mentality that's often found in the thankless no-man's land that is an NFL practice squad. But as plenty of former Steelers training camp standouts and preseason stars can attest, it doesn't always lead to a happy ending in a league that's all about business.
"Guys are hungry," said Heyward, the team's defensive captain, after beating the Cowboys. "It takes different guys to step up each game."
