Matthews trying to carry on family name

Houston Oilers offensive line. The two were inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and, after Munchak retired in 1993, he went on to coach Bruce and the Oilers. When Munchak became head coach of the Tennessee Titans in 2011, he hired Matthews to coach the line. The two have shared about as much success together as two people can.

“Munch is one of my closest, if not my closest, friend,” Bruce said.

None of this is to say that Matthews’ shot with the Steelers was the result of a favor or backroom agreement. Bruce Matthews didn’t even know his son was signing on to play for Munchak until Mike told him.

That they happen to share a family history is fun, but NFL teams don’t keep players around because of family history. You only need to ask Mike’s brother Kevin to find that out.

Just like Mike, Kevin Matthews was an undrafted free agent out of Texas A&M when he went to play for Munchak and the Titans in 2010. Playing for Munchak was a good experience, he said, though he “always kind of felt like maybe [he] was getting an extra eye” from teammates aware of the family connection.

Ultimately, though, it didn’t amount to a roster spot.

“I think I was the last guy to get cut. I was number 54 of the 53,” Kevin said, though he joined the practice squad and eventually played in 17 games for the Titans from 2010 to 2012.

Kevin had been undrafted, so it wasn’t like getting cut at some point was totally out of the realm of possibility. But seeing it happen showed Mike that not every player in his family was going to have such a long career.

“For me, it was weird to see that side of football,” Mike said. “Because my dad played 19 years, and it’s like, ‘You play until you don’t want to play any more,’ and that was what I thought.”

In reality, Kevin’s career arc is much closer to the standard. He bounced around the league for a few years, and then he retired to pursue real estate. Having his dad’s best friend as a coach didn’t allow him to make the team out of camp, and it didn’t seem to afford him much advantage going forward. The numbers are too tight, the pressure too severe, for a coach to take chances on personal favors.

For that reason, Mike knows he won’t get any special treatment with the Steelers. He’s aware he has to be nearly perfect. He can’t give the Steelers any reason to cut him.

He learned a lot from his experience in Cleveland, though maybe not in the way he might have expected. Matthews didn’t get as many reps as he hoped, often finding himself on the sideline, watching what was supposed to be his opportunity pass by.

“That was the first time I ever wasn’t the man,” Matthews said.

Forced to fully confront life outside of a football context for the first time since his youth, Matthews said he grew in his faith. He took the job selling equipment for a company called Rock Solid in October, and he married his wife, Haley, in March. He still loved football, still wanted to play, but he was realizing that it was a part of him, not the whole.

One day this past season, Mike was working out with his dad. As Bruce recalled, he was giving Mike the “company line,” encouraging him with platitudes about keeping his nose to the grindstone. That’s when Mike said something that caught his dad off guard.

“I still want to play, passionately, but I realize that this is a very small part of my life, even if it does go great,” Bruce recalled Mike saying.

“It was kind of humbling to me, because I’m thinking, ‘Oh gosh. I should have said that to him instead of he to me.’ ”

In some ways, it’s easier to digest a moment like that because the phone did ring. Mike is with the Steelers, and he does have a shot — albeit an outside one — to make the roster. But it’s hard to quantify what perspective like that could mean to Matthews.

In minicamp, Munchak said he sees similar traits in Matthews that he did in Bruce and Kevin — the way they move their hips, for example, and the way they recover. He praised Matthews’ work ethic, and starting left tackle Alejandro Villanueva, a former undrafted player, said “everybody feels like [Matthews] belongs.” That’s a start.

Matthews, for his part, said he’s just excited to be there. He’s playing guard in addition to his natural center, trying to show that he’s versatile. He’s trying not to worry about what he can’t control, and he can’t control the numbers. No one knows whether he will make the team.

Instead, he just has to keep working, figuring out whether he will become the next Matthews to find his greatness in football, or whether he will set off in search of it someplace else.