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 the 2011 as an anxious apprentice.
The weeks would come and go, but Heyward's status as a special teamer and occasional fill-in behind veterans Aaron Smith, Brett Keisel and Casey Hampton remained unchanged.
For a first-round pick who grew up watching dad Craig “Ironhead” Heyward spend more than a decade as a battering ram running back for five teams, and a player who felt as if football was literally in his blood, the strangeness of watching the game go on without him led to doubt that was difficult to shake.
“I'm thinking the sky is falling," Heyward told The Associated Press. "You’re wondering what you’re doing wrong.”
Turns out, nothing.
All that time spent watching allowed Heyward to absorb lessons from players with multiple Super Bowl rings stashed away somewhere. He learned not only what his job was on a given snap, but the other 10 guys on defense too. It also, in a way, preserved his body, the same body that will run onto the field during a regular-season game for the 202nd time when the Steelers (5-2) host the New York Giants (2-5) on Monday night.
No Pittsburgh defender has 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 the first defensive snap.
All those Hall of Famers will find themselves staring up in the team's record book at Heyward, who, if he's being honest, can't help but let his mind drift about whether he'll one day join them in Canton, Ohio. Asked if he thinks one day he'll merit serious consideration, the six-time Pro Bowler, three All-Pro and 2023 Walter Payton Man of the Year nods.
“I think so,” he said. “But it's not like you get to 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 on him. The clock is ticking to be sure, though he did sign a three-year contract in early September that could in theory keep him in black and gold through 2026.
The deal means Heyward will almost certainly retire as a Steeler, which is all he ever wanted. The bond between Heyward and the city where his father starred at the University of Pittsburgh and his mother grew up is strong.
He began investing in the community almost immediately after he was taken with the 30th overall pick in 2011, and maybe it's fitting that Heyward's record-breaking game came at the end of “Cam's Kindness Week,” a series of events across Pittsburgh that included everything from a visit to a Children's Hospital to a clothing drive to a donation to the athletic department to the football and girls flag football programs at Obama High School, his mother's alma mater.
Heyward doesn't see what he does as anything particularly special. His mother Charlotte instilled in her children at a young age the importance of giving back.
“She wasn’t just going to settle for us just going about our way and not caring about our community,” Heyward said, whose eponymous foundation focuses on everything from literacy to fighting cancer, which 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 T.J. Watt.
Return to form
Well, that and the fact 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 to be sure — so physical in Blount's case that the NFL literally changed the rules in the 1970s to prevent cornerbacks from bludgeoning wide receivers at the line of scrimmage — but they didn't endure contact on every snap. Heyward does, though he can still give as good as he gets.
The 35-year-old already has three sacks this season to boost 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 swat down the occasional pass, the groin injury that limited his effectiveness in 2023 an increasingly distant memory. It's not uncommon to see Heyward — flecks of gray in his beard and all chase the play 20 to 30 yards downfield, symbolic of a relentlessness that remains as fresh as it was the day he entered the league.
“He’s a power player who happens to be athletic,” Pittsburgh coach Mike Tomlin said. “Those power players grow old more gracefully than the oversized athletes. I imagine at 45, you couldn’t move Cam out of a gap.”
Heyward won't be playing at 45. Probably not anyway. He understands he has far fewer games in front of him than he does behind him. He now finds himself in the same place as mentors such as Aaron Smith and Brett Keisel were all those years ago, doling out 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 finds himself in a special place in his career. His younger brother Connor, a tight end taken in the sixth round in 2022, is at an adjoining locker. It's not uncommon for the two of them 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 children.
The day when Heyward will be in that role full time is coming. For now, he is trying to embrace being the latest chain in a defensive legacy that stretches back decades.
There is a throwback nature to the way Heyward goes about his job, one of the reasons the man whose record he will break on Monday night believes Heyward would have fit right in alongside the original members of the “Steel Curtain.”
“Cam is a great, great guy," Shell said. “He does a lot in the community and he's an awesome player.”
