Pittsburgh Steelers 2015 Profiles: Steve McLendon

The Pittsburgh Steelers are looking to build on their success last season, as they were able to win the AFC North after fighting claw-for-claw with the Cincinnati Bengals. They were unable to make good on their regular season success in the playoffs, largely due to Le’Veon Bell‘s untimely injury, and in order for them to win a playoff game this time around, they’ll have to show that their defense won’t undermine the work their high-powered offense will do.

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It’s clear that the Steelers secondary isn’t the strongest unit, but they have a good-looking front seven that is led by second-year inside linebacker Ryan Shazier, perennial standout Lawrence Timmons, the deservingly extended Cameron Heyward, and veteran James Harrison.

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There are also some underrated role players worth looking at in 2015, and one of those guys is misunderstood nose tackle Steve McLendon, who is one of the most underrated players at the position. Contrary to the attention Casey Hampton received during his career in Pittsburgh, the nose tackle position isn’t conducive to national attention, and what hurts McLendon more is that, unlike Kansas City Chiefs star Dontari Poe, he is, in fact, the prototypical nose tackle.

And by that, I mean that McLendon is a big 6’4″, 320-pound defensive lineman who will never play 400 snaps or more in a season (or, at least, he hasn’t in each of the past two seasons since becoming a key starter) and will never make an impact in the passing game (he has just one sack in the past two seasons). But like the prototypical nose tackle, McLendon does the dirty work in run defense by swallowing up blockers, freeing up others (most namely Heyward and Timmons), and plugging up running lanes.

Per Pro Football Focus, McLendon has been in the top-half among defensive tackles in Run Stop% in each of the past two seasons, and he’s had 33 and 21 tackles, respectively, to his name in 2013 and 2014. He was a bit better in 2013 than he was in 2014, but he was still an above-average starter in both years and, based on his body of work on the field, could have deserved more snaps.

The Steelers are unsurprisingly more than content with keeping the 29-year-old Troy product to his two-down role, and he could conceivably lose more snaps to second-year pro Daniel McCullers, who was viewed as a sleeper in college out of Tennessee.

But while McCullers is a name worth keeping in mind, McLendon is a name that needs to be remembered when talking about the Pittsburgh Steelers run defense next season. Last year, the Steelers fielded one of the NFL’s worst pass defenses with a 30:11 TD:INT ratio and a whopping 7.0 net yards per attempt allowed, and they were just as bad on the ground with 4.4 yards per carry surrendered.

That makes Steve McLendon all the more important in 2015, because he enters the year as one of the Steelers strong run defenders. On paper, this is a team that has a chance to be above-average in that facet of the game, especially with Shazier set to have a full season under his belt with a second offseason of work to boot.

Timmons and Heyward are proven commodities, so the only question mark is the DE spot opposite of Heyward. If second-year Notre Dame prospect Stephon Tuitt can prove critics (like me) wrong and develop, then the raw prospect could become the type of impact two-way player that the Steelers can hang their hats on.

For now, though, McLendon will have to continue to do the dirty work at the heart of the Steelers defense, and if the run defense as a whole doesn’t improve, then he’ll go unnoticed for a third straight season (and, perhaps, he could even be unfairly blamed for the struggles of a couple of others on the line). Here’s to hoping that doesn’t happen, and here’s to hoping that Shazier can be the catalyst for the Steelers run defense playing up to its potential in 2015 (a discussion about the pass defense will have to wait for another day).

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