The Pittsburgh Steelers locked up one of their top rising stars to a long-term deal, signing edge rusher Nick Herbig to a four-year, $100 million deal with $42 million in guaranteed money.
It would have been a shock if Pittsburgh didn’t lock Herbig up, but doing it at this price is a steal when compared to the current market value for edge rushers. When looking at other pass rushers in the same pay range as Herbig, as well as his fellow Steelers teammates, he has heavily outperformed all of them.
Jaelan Phillips vs. Nick Herbig
In March, the Carolina Panthers signed Jaelan Phillips to a four-year, $120 million deal. Phillips’ career high in sacks is 8.5, and it came back in 2021. He had five sacks in 2025, one sack in four games in 2024, 6.5 sacks in eight games in 2023, and seven sacks across a full season in 2022.
Comparatively, Herbig has 16 sacks over the last three seasons compared to 12.5 sacks for Phillips. Herbig has also forced nine fumbles in that three-year span compared to just one for Phillips, and he has also outpaced the Panthers’ edge rusher in tackles for loss 23-15.
Impact plays
Herbig is one of the best players at his position when it comes to making impact plays. For this, the impact play stat combines sacks, tackles for loss, forced fumbles, fumble recoveries, and interceptions. It shows the total amount of those such plays that each player makes, and also the percentage of their snaps that result in an impact play.
For this specific exercise, I looked at the impact plays from Jaelan Phillips, Travon Walker, Brian Burns, as well as Herbig’s teammates Alex Highsmith, and T.J Watt over the last three seasons and compared them to Herbig. What the exercise found is that despite playing in significantly fewer snaps than all five other players, his impact play rate was the highest of all of them.
Herbig had 53 impact plays over the last three seasons in 1,216 defensive snaps, good for an impact play rate of 0.043. The full look at all four players is shown below.
In terms of making splash plays consistently, Herbig is the best edge rusher the Steelers have on their roster, and they locked him up on a discount – a contract that will age gracefully over time.
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