Nick Herbig has 45 career NFL appearances, 11 career starts, and zero full seasons as a starter — and he just signed a four-year, $100 million extension with the Pittsburgh Steelers. I cannot believe we are still pretending the NFL rewards work. It rewards one thing: being genuinely irreplaceable at the one job that determines whether a game is winnable, and Herbig is very good at that job. Everything else is theater: the appearances, the starts, the “has he earned it” discourse. All of it is cover for a labor market that hasn’t rewarded labor in forty years.
Here is what Herbig actually did in 2025: 7.5 sacks, 47 total pressures, 26.3% pass rush win rate, first in the NFL. PFF graded him 86.7, seventh among 115 qualified edge defenders. He played 53% of snaps. He was, by every measure available, the most efficient pass rusher in professional football at 24 years old. The Steelers extended him because losing him to free agency would have been organizational malpractice.
After signing, Herbig said: “There’s no starters and backups. I’m a Steeler.”
He’s right. And the fact that he’s right is the entire problem.
That quote is going to get weaponized by people who think this contract is insane — he doesn’t even start — but the framing is backwards. The NFL has been telling players for decades that value is tied to usage, to starter status, to snaps. Herbig just got paid $25 million a year to blow that up. What he’s actually saying is that the market finally caught up to the reality that a 26.3% pass rush win rate doesn’t become more valuable if you run him out there on third-and-short against the run. Keeping him fresh and deploying him when it costs the offense most is worth $100 million. The snap count was a management decision. Herbig’s production was his.
https://twitter.com/AdamSchefter/status/2061907961396470267
The comparison that should be making wide receivers furious is the snap disparity. Your average WR1 plays 75 to 80 percent of snaps. He runs routes into coverage, blocks on runs, fights for the ball in traffic. He is on the field for the grinding, unremarkable work of a football game. The NFL has spent years telling receivers like Stefon Diggs and Davante Adams that they are fungible. You can find a receiver in round three. You can scheme around a mediocre wideout. The party line is that receivers are plentiful and therefore their leverage is limited.
Edge rushers aren’t plentiful. You cannot draft a 26.3% pass rush win rate in round five. You cannot scheme around the absence of one. The CBA groups edge rushers with linebackers for franchise tag purposes, which has historically undervalued them on paper, but it hasn’t suppressed the open market. Teams just voluntarily pay above the tag math because the alternative is watching your quarterback get destroyed every Sunday. That’s not a market correcting. That’s a market screaming.
https://twitter.com/spotrac/status/2061913646523904335
The Steelers now have $84 million in combined AAV tied up in edge rushers: Watt at $41M, Herbig at $25M, Highsmith at $17M. Second in the NFL only to Houston. Their fourth edge rusher is a rookie fourth-round pick, Jack Sawyer, on a rookie deal. The team built around the NFL’s most valuable position group and the rest of the roster fills in around it. You can lose at wide receiver and scheme your way to a first down. You cannot lose at pass rusher and scheme your way to a sack. The Steelers did the math and spent accordingly.
Herbig played the system exactly right. He got elite at the thing the NFL cannot replace, he let his snap count look modest, and he cashed out at 24. The wide receivers who run routes in traffic for 80 percent of snaps and still get told they’re fungible are the ones getting screwed. That’s the league’s labor market in full: irreplaceability gets nine figures, everyone else gets a lecture about earning it.
