The Pittsburgh Steelers seemed to take a bit of time before recognizing the urgency with which they needed to address the dearth of talent and depth at the inside linebacker position in the wake of Ryan Shazier’s career-ending injury late in the 2017 season. At the time, he was playing at an All-Pro level and almost single-handedly rebuilding the defense into a competent unit.
The poor level of play from the position following his injury was marked and evident, however, and that resulted in the team going out and signing Mark Barron in free agency in 2019, then following it up by moving up in the first round of the draft to get Devin Bush, who racked up over 100 tackles with six takeaways as a rookie.