PITTSBURGH — Never has the Green Dot attracted so much attention in Pittsburgh. It sounds like the title of a science fiction movie being shot along the Allegheny River, but this Green Dot is the drama playing out at Heinz Field this week.
The Steelers’ trade for inside linebacker Joe Schobert on Thursday night set all this in motion. The trade was a surprise in itself, the fact they not only brought in another Pro Bowl linebacker but did so at such little cost — a sixth-round draft choice to Jacksonville in 2022 and the Jaguars picking up half of his $7.3 million salary this season. The Steelers then promptly restructured the deal so he’ll count only $1.88 million against their salary cap this year, according to Over The Cap.
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As if that wasn’t surprising enough, the Steelers followed through on plans that Schobert shared over the weekend — they put the Green Dot sticker on his helmet and basically took it away from Devin Bush. The linebacker with the Green Dot is king of the defensive jungle. He relays the plays from the only radio transmitter on the defense to his teammates and gets them adjusted. That means coach Mike Tomlin and defensive coordinator Keith Butler, preliminarily at least, plan to have the new guy and not Bush handle those chores. Plus, if one linebacker comes off the field at any time, such as when the Steelers move to their dime defense, it would be Bush leaving and not Schobert, who is entering his sixth season and made the Pro Bowl in 2017.
Butler tried to calm the waters a bit when he said Tuesday those choices have not yet been made, but the more he talked, the more it sounded as if Schobert is the man.
“Right now, we’re just trying to see how he fits in,” Butler said after Schobert lined up next to Bush for all the first-team reps wearing that Green Dot. “We had him in the Pro Bowl (after the 2017 season when the Steelers’ staff coached the AFC team). We knew he was a smart kid then and there was a reason he was at the Pro Bowl. So we got all the confidence in him.
“Every day he’s going to be getting better. He’ll be more confident in terms of what he’s doing and what his teammates are doing around him. I think that’s probably the biggest thing for him right now, not just learning what he’s doing, because if we ask him to wear the Green Dot, he’s got to kind of know everything. We think he’s capable.”
Butler was quick to deny the Steelers might be disappointed in Bush, a linebacker they traded up to take with the 10th pick in the draft in 2019. He also reminded everyone that Bush is still recovering from a torn ACL that occurred Oct. 18, ending his second season.
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“We’re not disappointed in Devin at all,” Butler said. “What we want to do right now with Devin is he’s trying to get back healthy, he’s trying to make it back from a knee injury. So we’re trying to keep that weight off of him. He’s still going to help Joe with some of the calls and things like that, some of the things that might happen to him that we haven’t covered. He’s pretty much seen a lot of that.
“We’re not throwing (Bush) out of the gate. We still like him in there. If we have two guys who know what the crap they’re doing, that’s two quarterbacks we have on our team and we need that.”
What attracted the Steelers so much to Bush was his Ryan Shazier-like ability, the quickness and speed and playmaking talent. They sent Denver their first- and second-round draft picks in 2019, along with their third-rounder in 2020, in order to move from No. 20 in the first round to No. 10 to draft Bush. He played well as a rookie with two interceptions, four recovered fumbles and a touchdown in 15 starts. In his five games last season, he had none of the three. Schobert intercepted seven passes over the past two seasons. Among the many things he brings with him is the ability to cover tight ends, something the linebacker he replaced, Robert Spillane, could not. Thursday night in Philadelphia, Bush also had trouble covering, perhaps because he still hasn’t fully recovered from the knee injury.
“Sometimes you heal faster from an injury, sometimes you don’t,” Butler said. “We want to see how he’s feeling and playing in the preseason to get a chance to know what we can put on him.”
So the Steelers did not just trade for Schobert to replace Spillane. They did so because they still don’t know what they have in Bush. As Butler noted, Bush’s play will dictate how they use him. If he comes around physically to what he was before the injury, they won’t have to take him off the field because instead of deploying a dime defense with six defensive backs, they can just play the nickel with five in the secondary, four linebackers and two linemen. Bush can stay on the field with Schobert. That’s what Butler and the rest of them hope they can do.
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“For the most part, when you got four wide receivers in there, you want four DBs to cover them,” Butler said. “We’ll see in terms of who we’re playing, who we have to stop; that will matter big to us in terms of how much (Bush is) playing.”
(Photo of Joe Schobert: David Rosenblum / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)