The game between the Steelers and the Giants will be presented on RDS2 and RDS.ca starting at 8 p.m. Monday.
Cam Heyward‘s journey to immortality as a Pittsburgh Steelers starter didn’t begin on the field, but on the sidelines, where the then-rookie tackle spent most of the season. year 2011 in the role of anxious apprentice.
The weeks passed and passed, but Heyward’s status as a special teams member and occasional replacement for veterans Aaron Smith, Brett Keisel and Casey Hampton remained unchanged.
For a first-round pick who grew up watching his father, Craig “Ironhead” Heyward, spend more than a decade as a punishing running back for five teams, and for a player who felt like he had the football in the blood, the strangeness of seeing the game play out without him created a doubt that was difficult to dispel.
“I thought the sky was falling on my head,” Heyward toldAssociated Press. “We wonder what we are doing wrong. »
In fact, nothing.
All that time spent watching allowed Heyward to absorb lessons from players with multiple Super Bowl rings stashed away somewhere. He learned not only what his role was based on the circumstances on the field, but also that of the other ten players on defense.
He also, in a way, preserved his body, the same one that will take the field for the 202nd time in a regular season game Monday night, when the Steelers (5-2) host the Giants of New York (2-5).
No Steelers defensive player has played more frequently. Not Joe Greene. Not Jack Lambert. Not Troy Polamalu. Not Mel Blount. Not Donnie Shell, whose record Heyward will break when his number 97 steps onto the pitch at Acrisure Stadium to participate in his first defensive play of the match.
All these football immortals will find themselves looking at the team’s record book to see Heyward’s name, who, to be honest, can’t help but wonder if he’ll ever join them in Canton, where is the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
When asked if he thinks he will one day merit serious consideration for induction, Heyward nods.
“I think so,” he replied. “But it’s not like we’re entering the Pantheon when we’re still playing. The goal is to try to win a Super Bowl. »
Return the elevator
That’s the one thing Heyward has missed in his 14-year career. The one thing the icons of the franchise he’s overtaking have on him.
Time is running out, even though he signed a three-year contract at the beginning of September which could in theory allow him to wear the black and gold jersey until the end of the 2026 season.
This pact means Heyward will likely retire as a Steeler, which is something he always wanted. The connection between Heyward and the city where his father excelled at the University of Pittsburgh and where his mother grew up is very strong.
He began getting involved in the community almost immediately after being picked 30th overall in 2011. Perhaps it makes sense that Heyward’s record-breaking game came at the end of “Cam’s Kindness Week.” , a series of events across Pittsburgh that included everything from a visit to Children’s Hospital to a clothing drive to a donation to the athletic department to the Obama women’s football and flag football programs High School, his mother’s alma mater.
Heyward doesn’t consider what he does to be anything particularly special. Her mother, Charlotte, instilled in her children, from a young age, the importance of returning the favor.
“She didn’t want us to just go about our business and not care about our community,” said Heyward, whose eponymous foundation focuses on everything from literacy to fighting cancer, which has took away his father in 2006.
Heyward’s selflessness is what makes him “the true embodiment of a Pittsburgh Steeler on and off the field,” said longtime teammate TJ Watt.
Return to form
We must add to this the fact that Heyward remains a disruptive element in a position that does not really lend itself to longevity.
Blount and Shell, for all their accomplishments, were defensive backs. Tough, sure — so much so, in Blount’s case, that the NFL literally changed the rules in the 1970s to prevent defensive backs from manhandling wide ends at the line of scrimmage — but they didn’t have to taking contact on every play. Heyward does, but he can still give as much as he gets.
The 35-year-old already has three sacks this season, bringing his career total to 83 1/2, a record for a Steelers defensive lineman.
At six-foot-five and 295 pounds (roughly), he is still able to counter the simultaneous efforts of two offensive linemen who are responsible for stopping his pushes toward the backfield, and bringing down, occasionally, pass attempts from the rival quarterback.
With the groin injury that limited his effectiveness in 2023 an increasingly distant memory, it’s not uncommon to see Heyward — gray streaks in his beard and all — chasing down opponents 20 or 30 yards from the line of engagement, a symbol of a relentlessness that remains as fresh as it was the day he arrived in the league.
“He’s a powerful player who happens to be athletic,” Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin said. “These powerful players age more gracefully than oversized athletes. I guess at 45 you couldn’t move Cam down a lane on the field. »
There’s a retro feel to the way Heyward does his job, and that’s one reason the man whose record he’ll break Monday night thinks Heyward would have fit alongside the original members of the famous “Steel Curtain”, this group of defensive players who helped make the Steelers a dynasty during the 1970s.
“Cam is a remarkable man,” Shell said. “He does a lot for the community and he’s a great player. »
