The Pittsburgh Steelers have been in existence since 1933, the NFL draft has been in existence since 1936, and in all that time, one thing had never happened before: the Steelers trading up into the top 10 of a draft order to get a player they wanted. The franchise had never traded up in the first round at all until the 2003 draft, when they moved up to the 16th overall pick to select a safety from USC by the name of Troy Polamalu.
History says that move worked out pretty well.
But for this time-tested organization to move from the 20th pick to the 10th, as they did in the 2019 draft, you know the player they were targeting must be something special. Michigan linebacker Devin Bush, whom head coach Mike Tomlin had been targeting as a prospect since Bush’s sophomore season of 2017, was the man the team was looking for.
Through three seasons with the Wolverines — two as a primary starter — Bush amassed 13 sacks, eight quarterback hits, 23 quarterback hurries and 79 total stops, per Pro Football Focus. In coverage, Bush allowed 38 catches on 60 targets for 349 yards, one touchdown and one interception. Most importantly, the tape shows a linebacker capable of pulling off everything expected of the modern-day linebacker.
A decade ago, most teams would shy away from a 5-foot-11, 234-pound linebacker as a primary shot-caller. But faced with reams of three- and four-receiver sets, and different spatial deployments of skill-position players, defensive coordinators must be more inventive with their linebackers, treating them more like bigger safeties. And in that regard, Bush fits the modern prototype as well as anyone you could imagine coming out of college.
It’s not just Bush’s talent that resonated with Tomlin and general manager Kevin Colbert. Since Ryan Shazier suffered a career-threatening spinal injury in December 2017, Pittsburgh’s linebacker depth and effectiveness have taken an understandably bad turn. The same group that patrolled the defense effectively in 2017 fell apart in 2018, as the Steelers’ pass defense dropped from seventh in 2017 to 17th in 2018 in Football Outsiders’ opponent-adjusted metrics. Losing Shazier wasn’t the only problem; the defensive backfield also fell off a metaphorical cliff, and the schemes weren’t always ideally tailored to the players they did have. But the addition of Bush should be enough to spark a revival.
“As an inside linebacker, his game is really predicated on what is needed to play the position in modern-day NFL football,” Colbert said in the press conference after Bush was selected. “He can not only play the run, he’s also got exceptional coverage abilities, and he can rush the passer. So, very, very excited that we were able to move up and get a young player like Devin Bush.”
“He’s an all-situations linebacker,” Tomlin said of Bush. “An all-three-down guy — versus the run and versus the pass, be it in coverage or pressure. And those are just the tangible things. We’re equally as fired up about his intangibles. He comes from a football family, he’s a football guy, and everyone speaks very highly of him — not only as a player, but as a person. His leadership skills are unquestioned. We interviewed a lot of Michigan players through the draft process, and it was unanimous in terms of who their unquestioned leader was.”
“You’re going to get a complete player,” Michigan defensive coordinator Don Brown recently said of Bush. “They’re going to get a guy that’s going to compete against the run game. He’ll go in there and bang away at the inside run lanes. He’s fast enough to get on the perimeter. We used to just say, ‘All right, you got him.’ And he’ll cover anybody we [asked] him to cover.
“The thing I remember most with him is he would come and sit between series on the sideline, and if I’m sitting here, he’s sitting right there. Didn’t matter what the score was, he was the leader and he was right there — on every word and every adjustment. He was the guy on the field that the players trusted, that I trusted.”
Replacing Shazier, whom the Steelers selected with the 15th overall pick in the 2015 draft out of Ohio State, is a tall order for any rookie. But the tape backs up all the praise and shows a player who’s a perfect fit for not only what the Steelers want to do defensively, but what they must do with their linebacker corps if the defense is to return to relevance.
The one thing Bush can’t do consistently at his size is beating offensive linemen blocking him head-on; when he’s dealing with guys who outweigh him by as much as 100 pounds, it’s going to be a problem. But like a lot of smaller, quicker linebackers, Bush has learned to shoot through gaps much like a running back would, and his ability to move from the middle of the field to either sideline, with the body control to make stops, is special.
On this running play against Ohio State last season, watch how Bush moves with running back Mike Weber, doesn’t bite on the fake, adjusts his body to the target and makes the stop. His closing speed is one thing, but it’s the awareness that sets Bush apart.
Shazier had become the Steelers’ best coverage linebacker through his NFL career, proving able to deal with curl/flat receivers as well as slot receivers up the chute. Here, quarterback Dwayne Haskins is trying to hit Weber on a wheel route out of pressure, but Bush has it covered so well (and Haskins is so iffy a thrower under pressure), that the ball hits Bush in the back of the helmet.
And here, he trails Weber so well upfield, Haskins doesn’t have a shot to make the completion.
Bush can also peel off into coverage quickly upfield, as he does here against Parris Campbell out of the slot.
And here, against Michigan State, watch Bush match up from the slot to help muddy the picture for quarterback Brian Lewerke.
As a pass rusher, Bush gives the Steelers some interesting flexibility — he can shoot through gaps to the quarterback, or he can hit the edge from linebacker depth and bend the edge in credible fashion.
It’s not too surprising that Bush is ahead of the game from an acumen perspective. His namesake father was a first-round pick for the Falcons in 1995 and a defensive back for Atlanta, the Rams and the Browns for eight total seasons. Eventually, he would up helping to coach his son at Michigan, and now, Devin Bush Jr. has his own shot at the NFL’s brass ring.
“That’s one person I can always lean on, one person that’s never going to give bad advice,” Bush said at the scouting combine of his father. “He’s going to keep it straight up with me and keep it real. He always encouraged me to be the best person I could be. When I was young, he said not to play the game because he played it. I should play because I want to. He always made sure I was playing the game for me and not him. When I made the decision to play football, he always stood by me. He was my biggest critic. He was always on me, but he always helped me get better.”
So far, Bush has shown enough to make the Steelers push all the chips in to a historic degree. The next step, as daunting as it may be, is for him to become the pointman in a next-level defense.
