When the Pittsburgh Steelers kicked off their first mandatory minicamp practice on Tuesday, all eyes were on quarterback Aaron Rodgers—and understandably so. But one storyline that's getting lost in the shuffle is the mislabeling of fifth-round rookie draft pick Yahya Black.
Black, a five-year defensive tackle for the Iowa Hawkeyes, did his best work as a bullying run defender during his college career. His rare combination of size and power helps him anchor with ease while forcing the opposing running back to either change direction or stop dead in his tracks.
For these reasons, it was easy to see Black's fit as a nose tackle for the Steelers—a player who could get early-down work while helping plug the run in short-yardage and goal-line situations. In May, Teresa Varley of Steelers.com wrote that the big defensive lineman weighed in at 352 pounds—up significantly from the 330 pounds he weighed in at his Iowa Pro Day.
But despite the obvious choice of where to play the biggest player on the team, the Steelers are showing they have other plans. Worse plans, quite frankly.
Recently, defensive line coach Karl Dunbar addressed the rookie's positional status to the media. He's not playing nose tackle; he's currently operating as a 3-4 base defensive end.
“He can play all over the defensive line,” Dunbar said, via Nick Farabaugh of PennLive. “You know, he’ll play over the center, he’ll play at 4i. Right now, he is working at 4i, but we think he can play all over the place.”
The '4i' alignment Dunbar is referring to means that Black is lined up over the offensive tackle. This clearly shows that the Steelers are thinking about him as a base 3-4 end, generally the same position that Cam Heyward and Larry Ogunjobi played for Pittsburgh last season.
The Pittsburgh Steelers are already making a colossal mistake with Yahya Black
For whatever reason, it feels like the Pittsburgh Steelers' coaching staff has a difficult time evaluating the skill sets of players on their own roster. When we put on Yahya Black's tape, we can see a huge defensive tackle who possesses rare power and anchoring strength in the run game. But we also see an extremely limited athlete who doesn't possess much juice to move laterally, giving him limited upside as a pass rusher.
It's clear to most who watched Black's film that he should be playing nose tackle in the NFL. Sadly, the Steelers are already finding a way to stunt the growth of one of their rookie draft choices by playing him out of position.
This wouldn't be the first time.
Keeanu Benton, who does his best work knifing into the backfield but struggles to consistently anchor against the run, has a skillset tailor-made to be a 3-technique in the NFL. Yet the Steelers are insisting on sticking him at nose tackle for the third season in a row. Likewise, former third-round pick DeMarvin Leal should have had a similar role as an interior pass rusher. Instead, Dunbar and the defensive coaching staff elected to use him as an oversized (but unathletic, in comparison) edge rusher early in his career.
Some of these positional decisions are baffling, and one has the right to wonder what the Steelers' coaching staff is seeing. Yahya Black simply doesn't have the athletic traits to be a 3-4 base defensive end for Pittsburgh. Stop messing around and play him in the position that fits his skill set best. He should have been labeled as a nose tackle long before mandatory minicamp began.