Keith Butler couldn’t be blamed for wondering when the Pittsburgh Steelers would draft a player to help his defense.
He watched running back Najee Harris go in the first round Thursday. He sat by as the Steelers took a tight end and an interior offensive lineman Friday. The Steelers began the fourth round Saturday by taking a tackle.
It was the first time since 1984 the Steelers used their first four picks on offense.
It didn’t rankle the Steelers’ 64-year-old defensive coordinator one bit. He knew the focus in the early part of the draft would center on rebuilding the line and fixing the NFL’s 32nd-ranked running game. And he was fine with that.
“I’ve been here a long time,” said Butler, who joined the Steelers in 2003 as linebackers coach. “I’ve been fortunate enough to coach in three Super Bowls, and I think in all three of those Super Bowls, we had a good running game. So I’m not going to gripe and complain about us picking Najee in the first round and staying on offense the first day or two.
“That doesn’t bother me because the best defense to me is always sitting on the sideline watching your offense run the football.”
Too often that wasn’t the case for the Steelers in the final month of the 2020 season. While the Steelers were losing four of their final five regular-season games, the defense was on the field longer than the offense in all five games. The Steelers lost the edge in time of possession just three times while building an 11-0 start.
The Steelers still finished with a defense that ranked third in fewest points and yards allowed in the NFL, but they lost pass rusher Bud Dupree and nickel corner Mike Hilton to free agency and cornerback Steve Nelson in a cost-cutting move.
Still, Butler watched patiently while the offense took priority over his defense.
“They’re doing what they think is best for this team, and I agree with them,” Butler said, referring to general manager Kevin Colbert and coach Mike Tomlin. “I agree with them, even if we might not get a pick until later on. I’m for that. I’m for us being a good football team. I’m not just for us being great at defense. I’m for winning football and trying to win the Super Bowl.”
The Steelers finally got around to getting Butler some reinforcements with their compensatory pick in the fourth round when they selected Texas A&M linebacker Buddy Johnson. That began a run of four consecutive picks used on defensive players. Next came Wisconsin defensive end Isaiahh Loudermilk, whom the Steelers traded into the fifth round to acquire. Miami pass rusher Quincy Roche was picked in the sixth round, and Oklahoma cornerback Tre Norwood was added in the seventh.
Johnson provides depth at a position that was weakened when Devin Bush tore his ACL in the fifth game of the season. He could push former undrafted free agent Robert Spillane and 31-year-old Vince Williams, who is entering perhaps the final year of his career, for playing time.
“We went through six inside linebackers,” linebacker coach Jerry Olsavsky said. “Now, you don’t expect that to happen. It’s still the pandemic, but I lost Vince with the pandemic. Robert went down, things like that. It’s a tough game inside, and you can’t have enough good players.”
Although the line is perhaps the deepest position group on defense, starters Cameron Heyward, Stephon Tuitt and Tyson Alualu have a combined 28 years of experience. The drafting of Loudermilk helps the Steelers prepare for the future.
“He reminds me a little bit of a young Cam Heyward,” Butler said. “He’s surely not as developed as Cam was. … Cam will be a good tutor to this guy. I think Loudermilk would do well to get in that crowd with Cam and the rest of our defensive line and learn a lot from them.”
Roche played defensive end at Miami and will switch to outside linebacker in the Steelers’ 3-4 defense. Entering the draft, the Steelers had just one backup (journeyman Cassius Marsh) behind starters T.J. Watt and 2020 third-round pick Alex Highsmith.
“We rated him around the late third, early fourth, all the way into the fifth round,” Butler said about Roche, who had 30.5 sacks in four years at Temple and Miami.
Norwood had five interceptions in his final six games at Oklahoma. He might not step into Hilton’s role, but he gives the Steelers a piece to develop in the secondary along with several free agents that were signed after the draft. Corners signed after the draft were Michigan State’s Shakur Brown and Duke’s Mark Gilbert. Safeties added were Penn State’s Lamont Wade and Florida’s Donovan Stiner.
“We knew there were certain amounts of depth at all the different positions,” Colbert said. “We just had to wait it out.”
Nobody knew that better than Butler.
Joe Rutter is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Joe by email at [email protected] or via Twitter .
