Associated Press

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Cam Heyward’s journey to Pittsburgh Steelers immortality began not on the field, but on the sideline, where the then-rookie defensive tackle spent most of 2011 as an anxious apprentice.

Weeks would come and go, but Heyward’s status as a special crew and occasional backup behind veterans Aaron Smith, Brett Keisel and Casey Hampton remained unchanged.

For a first-round pick who grew up watching father Craig “Ironhead” Heyward spend more than a decade as a Rams running back for five teams and a player who felt football was literally in his blood, the oddity of watching his game continue without it led to doubt that was hard to shake.

“I think the sky is falling,” Heyward told The Associated Press. “You wonder what you’re doing wrong.”

It seems, nothing.

All that time spent watching allowed Heyward to absorb lessons from players with multiple Super Bowl rings tucked away somewhere. He learned not only what his job was at any given time, but also the other 10 men on the defense. It also somehow kept his body, the same body that will run onto the field during a regular-season game for the 202nd time the Steelers (5-2) host New York Giants (2-5) Monday evening.

No Pittsburgh quarterback played more. Not Joe Greene. Not Jack Lambert. Not Troy Polamalu. Not Mel Blount. Not Donnie Shell, whose record Heyward will break when his No. 97 trots onto the Acrisure Stadium turf for his defensive debut.

All those Hall of Famers will find themselves staring into the team record book at Heyward, who, if he’s being honest, can’t help but let his mind wander if he joins them one day in Canton, Ohio. Asked if he thinks he’ll one day be worth serious consideration, the six-time Pro Bowler, three-time All-Pro and 2023 Walter Payton Man of the Year nod.

“I think so,” he said. “But it’s not like you get into the Hall of Fame when you’re still playing. The focus is on trying to win a Super Bowl.”

Giving back

It’s the one thing Heyward’s 14-year career lacks, the one thing the franchise icons he’s passing have. The clock is ticking, to be sure, though it did sign a three-year contract in early September, that could theoretically keep him in black and gold until 2026.

The deal means Heyward will almost certainly retire as a Steeler, which is all he ever wanted. Heyward’s connection to the city where his father played at the University of Pittsburgh and his mother grew up is strong.

He began investing in the community almost immediately after being taken with the 30th overall pick in 2011, and it’s perhaps fitting that Heyward’s record-setting game came at the end of “Cam’s Kindness Week.” an all-inclusive Pittsburgh event series. from a visit to a Children’s Hospital to a clothing drive to a donation to the athletic department to the football and girls soccer programs at Obama High School, his mother’s alma mater.

Heyward doesn’t see what he does as anything particularly special. Charlotte’s mother instilled in her children at an early age the importance of giving back.

“She wasn’t going to settle for just us going our own way and not caring about our community,” Heyward said, whose homonymous foundation focuses on everything from literacy to fighting the cancer that claimed his father in 2006.

Heyward’s selflessness is what makes him, “the true epitome of a Pittsburgh Steeler on and off the field,” said longtime teammate TJ Watt.

Return to the form

Well, that and the fact that Heyward remains a disruptive force at a position that doesn’t exactly lend itself to longevity. Blount and Shell, for all their greatness, were defensive backs. Physical, of course, so physical in Blount’s case that the NFL literally changed the rules in the 1970s to prevent cornerbacks from hitting wide receivers at the line of scrimmage — but they didn’t endure contact on every snap. Heyward does, though he can give as good as he gets.

The 35-year-old already has three sacks this season to push his career total to 83 1/2, a record by a Steeler defensive lineman. At 6-foot-5 and 295 pounds (give or take), he can still get through double teams and beat the occasional pass, groin injury which limited its effectiveness in 2023 an increasingly distant memory. It’s not unusual to see Heyward – patches of gray in his beard and everyone watching the game 20 to 30 yards downfield, emblematic of a relentlessness that remains as fresh as the day he entered the league.

“He’s a strong player who happens to be athletic,” Pittsburgh coach Mike Tomlin said. “Those strong players age more gracefully than oversized athletes. I imagine at 45, you can’t move Cam out of a void.”

Heyward won’t play at 45. Probably not anyway. He understands that he has far fewer games ahead of him than behind him. Now he finds himself in the same spot where mentors like Aaron Smith and Brett Keisel were all those years ago, offering advice and the occasional trash talk in equal measure.

When Keeanu Benton arrived in the second round of the 2023 draft, Heyward told the rookie how vital it was to take care of yourself and shared various health-related resources with a player who could one day replace Heyward as the anchor of the defensive front.

Only not yet. Heyward is in a special place in his career. His younger brother, Connor, a tight end taken in the sixth round in 2022, is in an adjacent locker room. It’s not uncommon for the two to sit quietly — and sometimes not so quietly — and talk about everything from that day’s practice to Cam’s role as a sports dad to his three kids.

The day is coming when Heyward will be in that role full-time. For now, he’s trying to come to terms with being the latest cog in a defensive legacy that stretches back decades.

There’s a throwback nature to the way Heyward goes about his job, one of the reasons the man whose record he’ll break Monday night thinks Heyward would have fit right in with the original members of the “Steel Curtain.”

“Cam is a great, great guy,” Shell said. “He does a lot in the community and is a great player.”

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