Upfront investment a good call
Line is well-positioned to absorb loss of Hargrave in free agency
The highest-paid position group on the Steelers defense isn’t the linebackers now that Bud Dupree wears the franchise tag, or the cornerbacks with Joe Haden and Steven Nelson, or even the secondary as a whole once you add in safeties Minkah Fitzpatrick and Terrell Edmunds.
It’s the defensive line the Steelers invested in the most. There’s no arguing that the Steelers have constructed their 3-4 defense starting with the interior, led by homegrown versatile veterans Cam Heyward, a first-round pick, and Stephon Tuitt, a second-rounder. It’s also in those two where they’ve spent nearly a third of their salary cap space currently allotted to the defense.
That’s also why the Steelers head into 2020 in good shape along their defensive line, despite a more significant loss in free agency than any other unit this offseason. Nose tackle Javon Hargrave signed a three-year, $39 million deal with Philadelphia after hitting the open market, leaving the Steelers to replace a third-round draft pick who made 56 starts — four in the playoffs — over the past four seasons, missing just one game, that due to an injury his rookie year.
So why do the Steelers figure to be able to rebound from Hargrave’s departure? It might not be easy to replace his career-high 60 tackles, including seven for a loss, or his four sacks in 2019, but there’s a reason why we consider Heyward and Tuitt to be versatile veterans: They’ve been able to produce regardless of how the Steelers use them. Last season, they combined for 12.5 sacks, with 8.5 coming out of a nickel formation, 3.5 out of the base 3-4 defense and a half-sack by Heyward playing as a stand-up rusher in a dime formation when he was the only lineman on the field.
The pass-rushing from that duo is all just a bonus to their sturdy work against the run, the No. 1 job of any Steelers defensive lineman. But while it all starts up front with Heyward and Tuitt, too often the Steelers have had to finish without one of them — especially Tuitt, who was on his way to a career year but missed all but the first six games of 2019, the fifth consecutive season he has missed multiple games with injury.
Even if Tuitt returns to form from his torn pectoral muscle, the depth chart behind him will undergo a shake-up now that the durable Hargrave is gone. That the Steelers have several options to replace him is a testament to how they’ve built that depth, via a combination of experienced free agents, the draft and, most recently, the trade market.
First in line to absorb Hargrave’s 47% share of the playing time (with Tuitt healthy) should be 6-foot-3, 304-pound Tyson Alualu, who had a bounce-back season at age 32 after the Steelers extended him in February 2019. In the wake of Tuitt’s injury, Alualu’s role was closer to that of his first year with the Steelers in 2017 than a 2018 in which he largely fell out of the rotation late in the season.
If Alualu’s effectiveness wanes, the Steelers will have a second-year sixth-round pick in Isaiah Buggs itching to see more action. As a rookie, Buggs went from competing with seldom-used L.T. Walton for a spot on the active roster to playing in nine of the final 10 games once Tuitt went down. Buggs (6-3, 295) hasn’t played more than 13 snaps in a game and has just three career tackles but might offer the same sort of positional flexibility as the others to play end or nose in his sophomore campaign.
Perhaps in an effort to split the difference between the grizzled Alualu and relatively raw Buggs, the Steelers acquired another lineman to plug into the puzzle by trading a 2021 fifth-round draft pick to Baltimore for Chris Wormley and a 2021 seventh-rounder. Wormley (6-5, 300) isn’t a particularly notable name, but he’ll get a chance to see how his skill set translates from the Ravens to the Steelers. If Wormley worms his way into the base defense, it could be at nose tackle where Hargrave was entrenched, or possibly at end if either Heyward or Tuitt shift inside.
Wormley mostly played end in 2019 in Baltimore’s 34, clogging running lanes and freeing the linebackers behind him to make plays, but began his career there as a tackle. Inside or outside, he should slot in anywhere from No. 3 to No. 5 in the pecking order for the Steelers.
Still hanging on as a marginalized specialist as he goes into his seventh year with the Steelers is massive nose tackle Daniel McCullers (6-7, 352). McCullers has yet to become a frequent contributor since being a sixth-round selection in 2014, and while he occasionally gets called on against run-heavy teams, he likely would be the first to go if the Steelers address defensive line in the draft.
Adding Wormley and using a late-round pick on Buggs last year lessens the need to look for a lineman next month, but it’s not out of the question. Heyward turned in another nine sacks to give him 54 over the past three seasons, but he likely will only get one more longterm deal, and Tuitt’s injury history surely will be cause for pause as he enters the final three years of his contract. For now, though, the line appears to be wellstocked from top to bottom. And as teams around the league — especially the Ravens and Browns within the AFC North Division — emphasize powerful running games, the defensive front could become even more important in 2020.