Daniel McCullers Has Star Potential for the Pittsburgh Steelers
By Kipper
@pghsportsforum
Daniel McCullers Has Star Potential for the Pittsburgh Steelers
http://network.yardbarker.com/nfl/ar..._head_16946576
When the Pittsburgh Steelers drafted Daniel McCullers in the sixth round of the 2014 NFL Draft he was called a project player. Most players selected after the sixth round are project players, but not many of them are nearly as big as McCullers.
At the 2014 NFL Scouting Combing McCullers, a nose tackle out of Tennessee, measured at 6’7″ and 352 pounds. It’s hard to get much bigger than that and anyone with that kind of size is going to carry lofty expectations anytime they are seen playing on a football field.
For McCullers, however, the only expectation right now is consistency. His play is up and down, but if he can become more consistent he has the potential to be a star in the NFL.
Typically football players have fiery personalties; maybe not all of the time, but many of them have it come out when they take the field. That, though, is not part of McCullers make-up and getting him to get more intense on the field will be a big job for the Steelers coaches.
Corner William Gay said McCullers “Reminds me of the movie ‘The Longest Yard’, the big dude that was in there & started crying and then destroyed everybody.”
That may be a good comparison when it comes to his personality and getting more intense will be a big key for his future success. However, it is also a good comparison of his strength because McCullers has the size to go one-on-one with anyone in the league.
Gay went on to say, “We call him ‘Big Dan’. I told him ‘You’re bigger than everybody, just move people.’”
That ability did come out during the team’s one-on-one line drills on Wednesday. McCullers was put up against guard David DeCastro, who is coming off of a solid season as the team’s right guard and who has been one of the best lineman in one-on-one drills.
However, it was McCullers who got the jump on DeCastro driving him into the backfield. According to Ray Fittipaldo of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, McCullers got his hands inside of DeCastro’s framework rendering him helpless in the drill and drove him backwards almost knocking him over.
Anytime you can render a 6’5″ 316 pound offensive guard helpless, not to mention one of the Steelers best lineman, it shows that you have the ability to be a very good player.
The only question now is whether or not McCullers can play with consistency. It may have been the first time DeCastro was beat in one-on-one drills so far during camp, but McCullers will have to show that it wasn’t just luck that helped him beat DeCastro.
One note that is promising for McCullers, though, is that he has started camp as the Steelers second-team nose tackle. Heading into camp it was expected that he would be competing with Hebron Fangupo to back-up Steve McLendon.
The fact that he is already playing above Fangupo at this point could be a sign that the Steelers have been impressed so far with what they have seen from McCullers, and hopefully there will be more good things to come.