Welcome back to your weekly Pittsburgh Steelers mailbag. As always, we\u2019re here for the next hour to answer whatever is on your mind.<\/p>\n
To your questions!<\/p>\n
Yeshaya:\u00a0Hey Alex, regarding Travis Hunter, the 2 way player on the Jags. What were the causes of why players stopped playing on both offense and defense, and do you think he\u2019ll be able to overcome those factors?
Bonus question: if you had to pick one current Steeler to become a two way player, who would it be and which position?<\/p>\n
Alex:\u00a0Hey really good question. It\u2019s a bit unchartered territory of a player doing what Hunter is set to do to the degree he\u2019s doing it. Troy Brown, Julian Edelman, and others have dabbled both ways and Deion did back in the day but Hunter is going to try to log more.<\/p>\n
One, is conditioning. Just having the stamina to do it not just for a game but an entire NFL season. That\u2019s 20 games plus playoffs. Obviously, Hunter played an absurd amount of snaps in Colorado in thinner air so he could pull it off. But there is a long-term consideration here. Especially as a rookie because these guys really don\u2019t get much of a break from college to pro. They don\u2019t get to relax until that following offseason when they don\u2019t have the Combine, Pro Days, workouts, meetings, etc. Hunter didn\u2019t have the most intense process because he skipped a lot of stuff but it\u2019s still taxing.<\/p>\n
Two, it\u2019s the coaches trusting up to pick up the playbook. That you had enough reps to confidently be used. Balancing that will be key. Having packages and plays for the \u201cother\u201d side of the ball.<\/p>\n
Three, it\u2019s just the risk of injury. More snaps, more chances of getting hurt. Then you have holes to fill at two spots.<\/p>\n
If anyone is going to do it, it\u2019s Travis Hunter. Interested to see how it plays out.<\/p>\n
Current two-way Steeler? Hmm, that\u2019s tough. T.J. Watt as an EDGE\/tight end maybe? He played tight end at Wisconsin initially before flipping sides.<\/p>\n
ironkett:\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hi, Alex!<\/p>\n
A lot of the offseason plan on the D-line seem to be centered around allowing benton to exclusively play nose tackle. Do you think that is the right focus for him? He played multiple positions last year, do you think NT is his best position?<\/p>\n
Alex:\u00a0I\u2019m willing to give it another year. It\u2019s important to recognize even if he was shifted, he\u2019s still playing interior d-tackle most of the time knowing Pittsburgh\u2019s in their base 3-4 about 25-33 percent of the time. And I do like his pass rush ability over center\/guard. He club\/over move is insanely good and if he could just finish a few more chances and develop a better counter move (or even going to his left instead of his right), he would be more effective. So short answer, I\u2019m willing to see it through another year.<\/p>\n
David Rudin:\u00a0Alex my man! How\u2019s life in mom\u2019s basement?
Why do you suppose the Steelers haven\u2019t \u201chosted\u201d any of the available receivers, ie: Gabe Davis, Amari Cooper etc\u2026? Davis has been hosted by the Giants and 49ers and obviously it doesn\u2019t cost the team anything to kick the tires.
ColoradoDave<\/p>\n
Alex:\u00a0Mom\u2019s basement is good! Pizza rolls as far as the eye can see.<\/p>\n
Maybe it\u2019s true what Omar Khan said. They\u2019re confident in who they have, Calvin Austin III, Roman Wilson, and Robert Woods. If the team does explore external options, the earliest it\u2019ll happen \u2013 and I\u2019ve said this a couple times \u2013 is after spring workouts. OTAs and minicamp. They\u2019ll take a look at how a guy like Wilson looks in his second year and Woods\u2019 first full practices with the team before deciding to add any help. So that\u2019s why things have been quiet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome back to your weekly Pittsburgh Steelers mailbag. As always, we\u2019re here for the next hour to answer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2055],"tags":[8517,7,6,520,57,2360,426],"class_list":{"0":"post-53892","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-steelers","8":"tag-alex-kozora","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-pittsburgh","12":"tag-pittsburgh-steelers","13":"tag-pittsburghsteelers","14":"tag-steelers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114515690403742195","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}