Todd Heap knows Steelers present great challenge
Oct 18, 2011, 8:03 PM | Updated: 9:34 pm
Todd Heap knows the Pittsburgh Steelers.
A Baltimore Raven for the first 10 years of his NFL
career,
Heap has faced the Black and Gold 16 times, tallying 54
catches for 602 yards and four touchdowns.
The Cardinals’ next opponent, the tight end certainly has
some insight he can share.
“I’m definitely familiar with the Steelers, and I’ve had a
lot of good games over the years,” Heap told Arizona
Sports 620’s Burns and Gambo. “When people ask me who my
favorite team was I always used to tell them ‘the
Steelers,’ and Steeler fans would get all excited and then
you follow that up with, ‘yeah, I’ve had all my best games
against them.'”
Heap’s Ravens won seven of the 16 games, which generally
featured outstanding defensive efforts from both teams.
Pittsburgh’s defense is still one of the league’s best,
and Heap knows why.
“They’re solid all around,” he said. “You look at their
front seven, it’s one of the best in football.”
The defense will be without star James Harrison, who while
maybe still haunting Ken
Whisenhunt’s dreams, will not play Sunday due to a
broken orbital bone around his right eye.
However, Troy Polamalu should be in uniform, and the
Cardinals will certainly have to account for him.
“He almost sometimes adds another guy to the defense,”
Heap said. “He’s all over the place.”
Heap said Polamalu has a great knack for the ball and has
a tendency to show up in areas where you don’t expect him
to be.
“For some reason he sees something or feels something and
fills a gap where you’re looking at it on film saying
‘what’s he doing there’ and makes a play.
“He’s a guy that you have to be aware of, you have to be
aware of where he is at all times.”
The skill the Steelers possess on defense is something the
Cardinals will game plan for, though they’ll certainly
present a challenge for a team looking to snap a four game
losing streak.
“Coming off a bye week, which we needed a lot,” Heap said,
“we’re going to go into this game kind of like we have all
the other games.”
Heap said they’ll have to match Pittsburgh’s physicality.
“We’ve got to make sure we go in there and take our game
to them, make sure we dictate what we want to do and
basically we’ll see where it goes from there.”
