The Pittsburgh Steelers signed Nick Herbig to a four-year extension worth up to $100 million in early June, a deal that landed while the front office’s attention was shifting to Joey Porter Jr. Seven weeks later, with veterans reporting to Saint Vincent College on July 28, the Post-Gazette’s training camp countdown framed the obvious question on Tuesday: the Steelers are not paying Herbig that kind of money to be a role player any longer.
The production case for a bigger job was made last season. Herbig played 15 games with six starts in 2025 and led the team in quarterback pressures while ranking second in sacks with a career-high 7.5, and per the Post-Gazette he tied T.J. Watt with 27 hurries. Those are starter numbers generated on a part-timer’s snap count, which is exactly why the organization paid him starter money at 24.
Herbig has said as much himself. “Just working on expanding my role as more than just coming off the bench all the time and being more of a leader,” he said on NFL Network’s The Insiders in June, adding that “whatever Coach McCarthy asks of me, I’m willing to do.” The Steelers have carried a deep edge rotation for years, but Watt turns 32 in October, and defensive coordinator Patrick Graham now has reason to treat Herbig as a fixture rather than a situational rusher. The open question is early downs: Herbig’s game is built on quickness and winning in space, and the extension implies the team believes it holds up against the run at a full workload.
The answer starts showing up August 3, when the pads go on at Latrobe for the first time. If Herbig is taking regular first- and second-down snaps opposite Watt in padded work, the role change is real and not just contract-driven optimism.
On the fantasy side, Herbig is one of the more interesting IDP bets in the league this summer: pressure and hurry rates like his tend to convert to sacks with volume, and a jump from part-time to full-time snaps is the cheapest sack-production catalyst there is. He is worth a late IDP pick now, and a padded-practice report confirming an every-down role should move him firmly into LB2/edge-starter territory.
