Behind the Steel Curtain
A better late than never draft profile on Pittsburgh’s newest linebacker.
In this dead part of the Steelers’ season, it’s worth taking a closer look at the team’s rookie class. As we never got the chance to do a draft profile on Carson Bruener earlier this year at BTSC, here’s a scouting report-style breakdown of Pittsburgh’s new linebacker.
A redshirt senior at Washington and the son of a former NFL player and current scout, Bruener’s tape looks the part of someone who knows the game of football inside and out.
He’s undersized and doesn’t look like an elite athlete on the field, but made up for those shortcomings with his style of play. Bruener’s ability to sift through traffic, especially against zone runs, was the first thing that stood out to me when watching him play. He flows downhill very well.
Bruener is also a high motor defender who’s always in pursuit and willing to make physical plays.
The last clip against Oregon State in the video below is indicative of the type of linebacker he is — Bruener doesn’t have the athleticism to keep up with the receiver in coverage, but he makes up for it by chasing the play down and then taking advantage of the slick conditions to punch the ball out for a positive play.
Bruener’s football IQ also shows up in coverage, where he was a bit better than I expected. He didn’t have much of a problem keeping up with running backs leaking out of the backfield, and he gets depth pretty quickly when dropping to a deeper zone, with good awareness of what’s going on around him.
He had a surprising number of pass deflections, as well.
While Bruener has some definite limitations which you can see on tape, his 8.85 RAS and 4.58-second 40-yard dash time show a player who has the athleticism to play linebacker in the NFL. His RAS shows his agility as “elite” — a statement I definitely disagree with — but maybe there’s more upside there, and Bruener did play through a shoulder injury in 2024 that certainly didn’t help things.
Bruener could sometimes be a tick late reacting in coverage, and unsurprisingly, wide receivers would leave him in the dust on crossers. And on a handful of plays, it took him a few business days to turn a corner.
At 227 pounds, Bruener is a bit undersized for a linebacker. It didn’t show up as a negative as much as you might think, but it was most obvious when he tried to rush the passer. He’s just not built to overpower blockers with pure strength.
However, Bruener has a fairly strong upper half and impressive hand usage; if he had some room to maneuver, he was capable of shedding blocks to make...
