When the Steelers selected Casey Hampton in the first round of the 2001 NFL Draft, it sent shock waves through the rest of the NFL.
With Hampton holding down the middle of the Steelers defensive line, the team went from having the league's seventh-best defense in 2000 -- including 12th against the run -- to No. 1 in 2001, with a big improvement in run defense, which also led the league at just under 75 yards per game allowed.
It got to the point, however, that by 2002, teams quit attempting to try to run the ball against the Steelers -- most notably with the Patriots and Raiders going to an all-out air attack to start the season -- with the idea of keeping Hampton standing on the sideline.
Fast forward to 2020. The Steelers lost nose tackle Javon Hargrave, a third-round draft pick in 2016, in free agency. Instead of using a high draft pick on another nose tackle to replace him, the Steelers waited until the seventh round of last month's draft to select Nebraska's Carlos Davis.
Such is life in today's NFL, where true run-stopping nose tackles are going the way of the fullback.
"The big thing is that, like Javon displayed, it’s better when you have a nose that is versatile in today’s game," Mike Tomlin said Saturday. "There’s just not a lot of ways for those guys to have an impact if they’re nose-only. That’s what added value to Javon’s portfolio. You’ve got to be versatile. We have candidates. Within those candidates, you’ve got to be capable of doing other things because that’s the nature of the position in today’s game."
That doesn't bode well for veteran Daniel McCullers, the only true nose tackle on the Steelers' roster.
Heading into his seventh NFL season, McCullers was a sixth-round draft pick of the Steelers in 2014. But to this point in his career, he has played just 605 snaps on defense, including 131 in 2019, which represented the second-highest total of his career.
That happened even though Hargrave was playing more than ever, subbing as a situational pass rusher in the nickel and dime defenses after Stephon Tuitt was lost six weeks into the season.
But at 6-foot-7 and 352 pounds, McCullers doesn't offer much explosion as a pass rusher. In six seasons, he has 2.5 sacks and nine quarterback hits.
That means the Steelers could rely more on veteran defensive tackle Tyson Alualu to hold down the nose tackle position.
"We’ve added some young men in this process," Tomlin said. "We have some veteran guys who are nose capable, like Tyson Alualu. We’re comfortable with the men we have to work with. We’ll sort those guys out and allow those guys to establish themselves within the position."
"We’re not opposed to adding to that position if we come across a capable man between now and then," Tomlin said. "We’re comfortable with where we are."
