Cameron Heyward starts the season dominantly in his 200th game

1. Say hello to Heyward

Cameron Heyward will play in his 200th career game on Sunday against the Las Vegas Raiders and, barring an injury, will be the Pittsburgh Steelers’ franchise leader in games played by a defensive player by the end of the month. While it wasn’t unreasonable to assume Heyward was slowing down just a few weeks ago, Heyward appears to be enjoying a career renaissance during his age-35 season.

After an injury-plagued 2023 that lacked his usual production, Heyward was one of the NFL’s best interior defenders for five weeks in 2024.

According to Pro Football Focus’ subjective classification, it’s actually Heyward Is the best defensive lineman in the league this season. The same goes for everyone: Heyward has the team’s best grade for run defense and tackling among all interior defenders and is third best for pass rushing.

Heyward wasn’t docked for a missed tackle – no player with as many PFF-credited tackles as him (16) can make that claim. Only one D-linemen has a better PFF pass-run win rate (18.8%) and only one has more credited stops in the run game (13). A “stop” is a tackle that represents a “failure” of the offense.

If PFF isn’t your thing, Sports Info Solutions rates Heyward as the third-best defensive tackle in the NFL based on its all-inclusive metric. It joins PFF and pro-football-reference.com in not recognizing a missed tackle by Heyward all season. In addition, Heyward has eight QB hits on the latter offshoot – the most among all interior defenders.

2. Two hundred and more

On the Steelers’ all-time games played list for defensive backs, Heyward trailed only two Hall of Famers from the 1970s: safety Donnie Shell (201) and cornerback Mel Blount (200).

Assuming defensive lineman Brandon Graham suits up for the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday, Heyward and Graham will become the 16th and 17th active players in 2024 to reach 200 career games. The list is independent of position and includes nine special teamers and two quarterbacks. Heyward joins Graham, Calais Campbell, Jerry Hughes and Cameron Jordan as the only active defensive players to play 200 NFL regular-season games.

Other than Shell and Blount, only Ben Roethlisberger (249), Mike Webster (220) and Hines Ward (217) have played in as many games for the Steelers as Heyward. And even accounting for extended season schedules (in the ’70s, for example, NFL teams played 14 games per year instead of the current 17), Heyward’s 14 seasons of service with the Steelers trail only Roethlisberger’s 18 and Webster’s 15. Eight other players played 14 seasons for the Steelers, including two of Heyward’s former teammates: James Harrison and Ward.

3. No chunks

The raw stats suggest the Steelers have one of the better run defenses in the NFL. They rank fifth in total yards allowed (91.2 per game) and third in yards allowed per carry (3.68).

A key way to accomplish this goal is to avoid “chunk” plays, and the Steelers have done a good job in this area. According to Sharp Football Analysis, the Steelers have the second-lowest rate of opposing rushes gaining 5 or more yards in the NFL (30.8%).

The Steelers rank eighth with fewest rushes of more than 20 yards (two) and have not allowed a rush of more than 21 yards this season.

According to PFF, the Steelers have the fifth-best rushing defense in the NFL.

4. Wrapped up

One reason for Najee Harris’ mediocre performance (42 rushing yards) during last week’s loss to Dallas was that the Cowboys’ defense was focused on stopping him. According to NFL Next Gen Stats, Harris faced a stacked box on 43% of his 14 runs – the second-highest rate of any NFL running back in Week 5.

What’s interesting is that different teams tend to use different strategies against Harris. In two of the five games so far this season, Harris has faced “eight men in the box,” which is a rate among the top 10 NFL running backs that week. But he was there in two other cases below 10 for running versus stacked boxes.

For the season, Harris ran on 20.8% of his runs against an eight-man box, a rate that ranks 24th among the 50 qualified NFL rushers.