TRADE NEWS: pittsburgh Steelers Just signed new LB $85M
Orlando, Florida — Head coach Mike Tomlin announced on Sunday that the Pittsburgh Steelers will deploy recently acquired linebacker Patrick Queen as an all-situations player.
That shouldn’t come as a surprise because Queen played the most defensive snaps of any player on the Baltimore Ravens last season (1,121), accounting for 96.9% of the team’s defensive snap total and more than first-team All-Pro Roquan Smith.
He will probably play in the basic defense and Nickel and Dime subpackages for the Steelers. Like in Baltimore, he may also serve as the defense’s green-dot communicator.
“It’s exciting that he’s an all-situations linebacker,” Tomlin remarked on Sunday during the NFL Owner’s Meetings for 2024. He is a player who can score three points. We are very excited about having him join the team because he is a versatile player who can tackle, cover, and blitz. He is also only 24 and a half years old, so he has the ideal balance of youth and experience. We can’t even begin to express how exciting it is to have him around. It will be an exciting marriage since we’ve seen a lot of him and he’s seen a lot of us.
Queen told him a funny anecdote about how Tomlin told him that Queen wasn’t supposed to be a Raven during a Steelers-Ravens game.
“You’re not a Raven,” Mike Tomlin said at me while I was on their sideline during my first season. It’s not you, Raven. It’s not meant for you to be there. You do not belong to them. Thus, there’s something personal every time I perform them,” Queen remarked in October. “It doesn’t matter if he was kidding. It doesn’t matter if he was sincere. In the end, you’re telling me that I’m not a Raven when I’m on your sidelines. That is rather discourteous.
Although Tomlin chose not to discuss the discussion, he expressed his excitement about Queen’s arrival and clarified that there was no ill will or unresolved issues between them that needed to be resolved before Queen signed a contract to play for the Steelers.
He laughed and replied, “I could, but I won’t.” “There is a certain kind of gamesmanship that happens in-game—banter, if you will—and I take part in it. We all are, I believe. That’s all there was to it. It goes without saying that I like Patrick Queen because we conducted business with him, so it’s probably more of a tip of the hat than anything else. Man, money, and other such things had already been established by the time we met. discussed, so all of that is water under the bridge.