Cam Heyward has become one of the better players ever to wear a Steelers uniform. He’ll go down as a legend with the team for many reasons. However, his time with the Steelers hasn’t been without its struggles. During his first few seasons, he found it hard to see the field as a youngster on a talented defense.
As the Steelers’ first-round selection in 2011, Heyward probably felt a lot of pressure to make an impact early in his career. Through the first four games of the 2013 season, he still had not started a game for the Steelers. The glimpses of his potential were there, but he was still trying to put it all together. At the time, Pittsburgh held an 0-4 record after a brutal start to the year.
On The Pivot Podcast on Friday, Cam Heyward told a funny story about an interaction he had with former Steeler Ryan Clark at the time.
“I think we had started off, like, 0-4,” Heyward said, according to video via the show’s YouTube page. “Everybody’s just a little bit tight. Like everybody’s just trying really hard, and out of nowhere, RC [Ryan Clark] came at me like, he called me a bust. And I was like, ‘Wait, hold on. What? He just called me a bust.’ So, like, I’m hot… Like I’m trying everything to get on the field. And I got a guy in the leadership role coming at me saying I’m a bust. And so I wanted to fight RC at the time.”
The 2013 season wasn’t a pretty one for the Steelers. They started 0-4 and were also 2-6 halfway through the year. Pittsburgh did manage to right the ship eventually and rounded out the year with an 8-8 record.
On a side note, looking at that season as a whole really puts Mike Tomlin’s winning-season streak in a new light. After starting the year 2-6, Pittsburgh won six of its last eight to finish .500.
Coincidentally, after that interaction Heyward spoke about with Clark, he earned a starting role. He would go on to start the final 13 games of that season, and he’s never left the starting unit since. We all know of the legendary career he’s managed to build since then.
Heading into 2025, Heyward finds himself as the veteran, a role he’s been in for quite a while now. As the Steelers will likely start to get younger on defense in the future, Heyward’s now the role model, the same thing he had around him in the veterans on the Steelers’ defense back in the early 2010s.
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