Can Cole Holcomb Rebound in 2023?

Photo: USA Today Sports

Picture this. A team drafts a linebacker in the fifth round with minimal expectations of him contributing. He becomes a no-doubt starter week-to-week putting up top five at his position numbers in IDP fantasy football for the majority of his young career. Then, tragedy strikes! He suffers a season-ending foot injury that requires surgery. At the time of his injury, he is in the top three in tackles and well on his way to over 120+ stops! This has been the story of Cole Holcomb to date, but it has only been a few chapters. There is plenty more time for his resume to be improved upon, but it won’t be as simple as it has been to this point. He’s recovering from injury, and this past offseason, he was acquired by another team. Have no fear, IDP fans. The best is yet to come for this star inside linebacker!

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A Brief Recap

What we have seen from Holcomb throughout his career is an ability to impact the game when he’s available. In a career that has spanned just four years, he has been injured twice. Once in 2020, when he missed four games due to a knee sprain, and then 10 games this past season due to a foot sprain that inevitably caused him to get surgery. Missing 14 games in four years at the inside linebacker position isn’t a bad trend, but it is worthy of consideration when looking into who Holcomb is. In the non-injury years, he has finished as an LB1. In his rookie season, he compiled 106 total tackles, and in 2021, coming off the knee injury mentioned above, he compiled 141 total tackles. Last year prior to the foot sprain, he was on pace for a staggering 170 total tackles. There is something to be said about guys injured early being injured often, but neither of these has been career-threatening and they’ve both been sprains as opposed to tears or fractures. There is little reason to believe he won’t be back to form at the start of the 2023 season, and as described above, that is a big-time get for any IDP roster.

Looking to 2023

So, he gets healthy for the 2023 season, but his team changed. How can we expect him to get all those stats again? For starters, Pittsburgh Steelers linebackers have a track record of scoring big-time points when the right guy is at the helm. Gone are the days of Devin Bush and Myles Jack being the inside linebackers for the Steelers. This past offseason, we saw a complete 180 at the linebacker position for this team. A common theme that needs to be looked at when evaluating IDP players is noticing whether or not they will play with a defensive head coach. Just like a quarterback improving when they’re with an offensive coach, a linebacker will improve (or, in Holcomb’s case, maintain) when they’re with a defensive head coach. Holcomb gets the benefit of leaving a defensive head coach, Ron Rivera, in Washington, to Mike Tomlin, a man known to value defense over offense who has a better resume to boot. This gives Holcomb plenty of opportunity to flourish and play freely within a defense loaded with talent.

The Steelers defense is loaded with credible pass rushers and interior defenders who can apply heavy pressure. This almost always improves an inside linebacker’s numbers, and it makes sense why. When you have elite players like T.J. Watt and Alex Highsmith rushing on the outside, to savvy veteran Cam Heyward and rookie Keeanu Benton giving you credible interior pressure, any quarterback worth his check will get the ball out quickly. If this is the case, the ball will not often go deep, meaning slants and checkdowns over the middle just waiting to be gobbled up by a sideline-to-sideline player, which we have seen Holcomb be. As great as this opportunity will be for Holcomb, we need to recognize that he is a mostly tackle-dependent player to this point in his career. He rarely garners credible stats elsewhere, but the reality remains that this is a great spot for him to land to get those high tackle numbers.