LATROBE, Pa. -- Forget "Brother, can you spare a dime?" The Steelers are jumping right to the quarter.
Keith Butler had said earlier this week that he would look at all options at inside linebacker but he wanted his young secondary to learn their regular positions before adding more to their plates.
“We’ll see it,” Butler had told me of putting defensive backs at inside linebacker. “The thing is that some of those guys are young. We want to see them play one position before we ask them to play another position. Cam Sutton is playing a lot of positions for us. We think he’s capable mentally of handling that. Terrell (Edmunds), Morgan Burnett is capable of doing that too. We’ll get into it and see how we like it. We’ll see what Marcus Allen can do, Marcus is a big rangy guy. He might be better off in the box. We’ll see.”
Well, they must be quick learners.
The Steelers have unveiled a new package that features seven defensive backs, putting it on display for a couple of plays Wednesday and then more prominently on Thursday. They're calling it the quarter package and it features corners Artie Burns and Joe Haden on the outside, with Mike Hilton, Sutton and Allen in the box and Nat Berhe and Edmunds deep behind a four-man defensive front.
At least that was the alignment they used the past two days with starting safeties Sean Davis and Burnett out nursing minor injuries. We can assume once they return, Berhe and Allen won't be part of the package.
They'll still run the nickel package with five defensive backs on the field. And they'll use a dime, as well, with six defensive backs. But seven defensive backs? That doesn't happen often.
"We want to see how many DBs we can get out there to cover," Haden told me Thursday after practice. "We have a lot of strong safeties that are able to be in the box and cover tight ends. That shows how much talent we've got in our room. They're taking the linebackers off the field and putting all of the DBs in there."
To Haden's point, Edmunds, the team's top draft pick, is 6-foot-1, 217 pounds. Burnett, the team's big free agent signing this past offseason, is 6-foot-1, 209 pounds. And Allen, a fifth-round pick, is 6-foot-2, 215 pounds. They're not that much smaller than Ryan Shazier, a 6-foot-1, 230-pound linebacker many fans wanted to move to safety. And many teams around the league are taking safeties and making them linebackers.
The two positions have become interchangeable. And both Kevin Colbert and Mike Tomlin openly talked about the possibility of using some of their safeties as linebackers at times when they drafted Edmunds and Allen.
What they failed to mention is that the Steelers might do so with no inside linebackers on the field.
"These strong safeties and outside linebackers and even inside linebackers are kind of all the same," Haden told me. "Like Shazier. Shazier's not too much bigger than these guys. If you're quick and strong enough to disengage from the offensive lineman or even beat him to the spot, the game is becoming so much about being faster and not a big mauler."
Whatever works.
Haden, a nine-year veteran, has seen the defense talked about in previous seasons -- seven in Cleveland and the past two with the Steelers -- but hasn't seen it employed before in a game.
"We'll probably take a look at it in a couple of the preseason games," he said. "If it works, we might have to use it."
The thing that makes it work is that the Steelers now have a number of talented players in their secondary. They have completely made it over. Burns and Davis, their top two picks in the 2016 draft, are now their most tenured defensive backs. Burnett and Haden, a pair of nine-year veterans acquired as free agents, are the older calming factors. And everyone else is in his first or second season in the NFL.
It makes for an interesting mix, but one with a lot of potential for growth. And obviously, there's a potential to try new things.
"I love it," Haden told me. "These dudes love the game and they don't say much. You don't want to hear rookies too much. I'm not trying to sound like an old head or anything, but when you're first in the game, just listen and take all of the knowledge and go as hard as you can. If you make a mistake, go as hard as you can. Then, we'll come and watch the tape. Don't make the same mistake twice.
"Once you do that, you just grow and get better and better and put the days behind you. That's what these guys are doing. They're not saying anything. They're taking the coaching. They're asking questions and they're taking it out here to perform. I love them."
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
Steelers training camp, Latrobe, Pa, Aug. 2, 2018. - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS
