Spencer Anderson recorded his first catch last Sunday, and he hopes it won’t be his last—but perhaps he does hope it will be his fastest-thrown. The third-year lineman talked on Wednesday about making a catch last week early in the game—and what he regrets. That, and just the fact that he’s never experienced an in-game pass from an NFL quarterback before.
“I saw him go through his progression from the right to the middle and then I looked and went, ‘Oh, oh, he’s about to throw it to me’”, Anderson said when he realized Aaron Rodgers was actually going to throw to him, via the Steelers’ website. “Before I knew it the ball was on me. All I heard in the back of my head was ‘ball security, job security,’ so two hands, get as many yards as I could”.
Anderson said that he told the wide receivers on the team that he gets it now. Others earlier in the week were joking about how realization of how fast an NFL pass can come at you, especially when it’s Aaron Rodgers on the other end of it. Now that he knows what to expect, though, he’s hoping to be better prepared for the next one.
“Obviously, he’s not gonna take anything off of it for me”, Anderson said of Rodgers. “I just have to be used to it, which I was. I just wish I could have gotten more YAC”. And he’s not wrong—Anderson only went for four yards on that play. For a big man with even a bit of space, you’d like him to get more than that just through sheer size. It’s not a play worth running if you’re going to pick up just four yards.
Of course, the Steelers were never going to make Spencer Anderson a staple of their passing game. But he has become a fixture as a sixth lineman, and that catch now makes teams respect the potential threat. You only have to leave a guy open once for something bad to happen. Now they know Rodgers is willing to make that pass, so they can’t just ignore him and sell out on the run.
And the reality is he might not be available for the role this week, anyway. LG Isaac Seumalo’s status is unclear for Sunday after suffering a pectoral injury against the Packers. If he can’t go, then Spencer Anderson would have to start in his place. Technically, he could still declare as eligible on any given play at guard, but that’s a dead giveaway for trickery.
But there is something inherently amusing about an offensive lineman talking about yards after the catch. At least when he’s talking about his own catch. 6-5, 305-pound humans don’t catch a ton of passes. But when they do, they’d better make themselves hard to bring down.
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