The nose tackle is fast becoming the dodo bird of professional football. If the World Wildlife Federation tracked it as a species, the nose tackle would fit somewhere between the Asian elephant and black rhino — endangered to critically so.
What once served as the fulcrum for the 3-4 defense, the big middle lineman, now sits on the bench for nearly three quarters of its plays. Not since Chuck Noll switched in 1983 from the 4-3 his 1970s Steel Curtain made famous has there been so little use for a nose tackle by the Steelers.
“It’s a shame isn’t it?” groaned Edmund Nelson.
He played nose tackle and defensive end with the Steelers from 1982-87 and as such experienced their switch from the iconic 4-3 to the 3-4. He backed up their first starting nose tackle, Gary Dunn, for that first game as a 3-4 defense against Denver Sept. 4 1983, at Three Rivers Stadium.
The Steelers have kept with that 3-4 base defense in various forms for what will be 34 consecutive seasons in 2016. What has changed over those decades is the proliferation of the pass in the NFL, encouraged by many rules changes.
“You talk about West Coast offense, I think it’s All Coast,” Nelson said. “They air it out and give you all kinds of movement.”
Stopping the power run and clogging up the middle, the most important jobs of a nose tackle, is not as vital when teams do not run the power much anymore. Offenses often open with three or even four wide receivers and spread out the field, and defenses respond with five or six in the secondary and only two defensive linemen — sometimes with all 11 defenders standing up.
Casey Hampton was the ideal and most decorated Steelers nose tackle in the past three decades. His 12-year career included five Pro Bowls and ended after the 2012 season.
“Even Casey Hampton at the end of his career, he’d be in one play in a four-down series and then they’d take him out and go to their packages,” Nelson pointed out. “Their theory on offense is that a 5-yard pass is a little better than a 5-yard run on first down.”
As the Steelers continue to rebuild from their great 21st century defense that Hampton and others left, they have vital needs in their secondary and some would say nose tackle. It is why the name Andrew Billings of Baylor appears on mock drafts here and there. He is a 6-foot-1, 311-pound defensive tackle. He would be ideal as a first-round pick to play the nose, just as Hampton was in 2001.
But this isn’t 2001.
“If I were them, the way defenses are headed, I wouldn’t draft one,” Nelson said. “You put a nose tackle in there, it’s almost like a wasted body. Boy, that hurt me to say that.”
Although Steve McLendon started for them at the position the past three years and also could play end, they made little effort to keep him. He signed as a free agent with the New York Jets for a relative pittance — three years that includes a $2.25 million signing bonus and a $1.75 million 2016 salary — a salary cap hit of $2.5 million this year.
By not trying hard to keep him, it is a sign that the Steelers either believe they can get by with Daniel McCullers playing 25 percent of the defensive snaps at nose tackle or they will find someone in the draft.
“They succeeded last year where they didn’t have a lot of good snaps out of that position,” said Tom Modrak, executive director of the Blesto scouting service to which the Steelers belong. “They were better on defense than you anticipated and that’s probably a sign of the times — the art of coaching, keep adapting, keep changing, keep using what you have.”
The Steelers list McCullers as 6-7, 352 pounds. He is massive, built like an old-fashioned nose tackle if tall for the position. He is considered strictly a tackle, not as a backup defensive end, and that kind of play is becoming a dinosaur in the business.
“You get a nose tackle that is a good run-stopper and they’re throwing the ball all the time and generally those guys aren’t good pass rushers and do you want them on the field?” suggested Tom Donahoe, who preceded Kevin Colbert as Steelers de facto GM and now is senior personnel executive with the Eagles.
“We don’t have those big, wallowing hogs playing anymore,” said Gil Brandt, senior analyst at NFL.com who spent 30 years as the player personnel director of the Dallas Cowboys. “Guys playing that inside position are 310 pounds and run 5 flat. We’re having more guys who can rush the passer than we have with that nose tackle.”
Billings runs the 40 in 5 flat. Those who believe the Steelers should draft him say he’s not just a nose tackle in a 3-4, that he could rotate in their substitute passing defensive alignments with their two ends, Stephon Tuitt and Cam Heyward, that he can rush the passer.
He’s more of a modern-day nose, who can play elsewhere when the 3-4 morphs into the dime. Teams that play 4-3 defenses might value him more as a pure tackle.
“He’s a candidate,” Modrak said, referring to Billings. “He’s big, strong, a two-gapper but he’s athletic enough to rush. He doesn’t have the length you like for that, but he can, and he deserves to be in that category if you’re going to take one first. He’s athletic for a big man, plays hard.”
But with the old, pure nose tackle still needed in 3-4 base defenses, can teams move on entirely from the position? There is, after all, still that 25 percent.
“I think it’s become kind of like the fullback,” said Brandt of an offensive position that also has waned in use.
“Football is cyclical,” Donahoe noted, “and it changes a lot. But the trend we’re in right now is for people to try to spread out the defense and throw the ball. Some games, you feel like people don’t even want to run the ball. But everything in football goes back and forth and one thing is popular for a while and someone does something different and has a lot of success and it becomes popular.”
The popular thing now is to not put much emphasis on a big, strapping nose tackle because even if “you get a dominating guy, he might end up playing 35 percent of the time,” Donahoe pointed out.
“Do you want to use a first-round pick on a guy not to play that much?”
Ed Bouchette: ebouchette@post-gazette.com and Twitter @EdBouchette.
First Published: April 25, 2016, 4:00 a.m.