Pittsburgh Steelers Media Conference

Thursday, December 30, 2021

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

Keith Butler

Weekday Press Conference


Q. You been with Ben your entire Steelers career.

KEITH BUTLER: Uh-huh.

Q. What stood out for you from him over these 18 years?

KEITH BUTLER: Well, we won two Super Bowls. I was here a year before he got here. This is his 18th, isn't it? Yeah.

Probably the highlights, you know, were the two Super Bowls that we won. We went to three and won two of them. That was the most fun that we had, and probably in his prime at the time.

You know him playing that long, you can't help but gain a lot of knowledge about the league and about the guys that you play against, what different teams do, what different coordinators, defensive coordinators with him especially, what they do.

So I've always said this and I'm sure he'll tell you this too, it beats the heck out of working for a living. It does. You get to play and get paid that you will daggum money.

I'm sure he'll miss it. And the thing he'll probably miss more than anything else is the friends that he made. You know, I'm just looking back at my own self. I didn't go 18 years, I went ten, but looking back at the guys that you played with, what kind of people they were, how unselfish they were, it's really a great thing to do, you know.

Like I said, beats the heck out of working for a living, you know. If your parents -- my parents did anyway, they had to work for a living. I know it's hard and, you know, Ben will get his golf game up, so we'll see. (Smiling.)

Q. Can you beat him?

KEITH BUTLER: He's got a -- no, he'd probably beat me right now. If he gives me my strokes he's supposed to give, then he wouldn't. He wouldn't.

Q. What's always impressed you about him as a quarterback?

KEITH BUTLER: He kind of makes due sometimes, you know. You're not sure exactly what he's going to do all the time. He's had a lot of different situations. He's probably seen just about everything you can put in front of him. He's done a good job of handling it.

Q. Expect the Browns to run the ball 50 times this week?

KEITH BUTLER: Sure. I would. No doubt. The guy they got, you know, shoot, they got 27 coming back, too? Man.

You know, I think he's the best running back. I think Chubb is the best running back in to the league. He does a great job of seeing. He's got great vision. He does a great job accelerating through holes when he sees the hole.

It'll be a challenge for us, big time challenge for us, like it always is. We got to play them well. We played them pretty well last time, but he still got that -- I mean, second play of the game he gets a good run on us, so we got to do a good job trying to control him as much as we can.

Q. Is he fun to watch in that regard, we're you're, hey, we were here, we were where we needed to be. (Indiscernible.)

KEITH BUTLER: Of course. Of course they are, but at the same time, they're looking at the same stuff. You know, they're going to figure out ways to find holes in it, and we can't do the same thing, exactly same thing we did last time. We got change some things up on them.

They did a good job hitting a couple big plays on us. We got to, you know, we got to hold them to as least points as we can.

I'm not saying that we're capable of keeping them down to ten points like we did last time. I think that's going to be very hard to do. They're going to do what they do best, and if I'm them, I'm running the ball. I would definitely run the ball.

We got to be able to stop the run and then get them in passing situations and see what we can do.

Q. With Baker being so banged up, can he still get outside the pocket?

KEITH BUTLER: He can. He can. You know, I think they want to keep him in the pocket as much as they can and let him get his back foot, and the time he hits his back foot he's read the coverage and he knows where he's going to go and he's got a good, quick release on the ball.

You know, he's got to overcome some things here and there, like all of us do, so I think he will because I think he's tough enough to do it.

Q. How has Loudermilk grown? Are you starting to see some progression?

KEITH BUTLER: Yes, he's getting better. He's getting better. He still got to take on people at the line of scrimmage and not get knocked off the ball. I think he will do that as he gets older. You naturally gain weight, and he'll get bigger through off-seasons and stuff like that.

I think he's going to end up being a pretty good player for us. It's just a process that he's going through right now to become a good player.

Q. (Indiscernible) who has been in there all season as the man, gets traded for, and now he's back out there and it seems like he played pretty well the other day.

KEITH BUTLER: He does, he does all the time. That's what did he. Shoot, we played Tennessee the time before and I ain't seen Henry get jacked up like he jacked him up, so...

Yeah, he does a good job for us and I'm glad we have him.

Q. Plays downhill.

KEITH BUTLER: Plays downhill, he plays hard, he's a smart football player. I think he's a -- I'm glad we have him. I do. I'm very glad we have him. You know, he'll be a starter one of these days I think.

Q. Keith, two about Witherspoon if I may. Do you feel like he's gaining some traction?

KEITH BUTLER: Who is that?

Q. Witherspoon.

KEITH BUTLER: Yes, I think he has. He's a big, long, tall kid, and hard to throw over. You know, and so the thing that he still is learning right now is sometimes the urgency of the game. Sometimes you got to be a little bit more urgent. I think he'll still learning that a little bit.

When he does that he's a pretty good player. His size will help him in terms of covering people down field and stuff like that. It's harder to throw over guys that are that tall. They try to throw fades down the sideline and stuff like that. It's kind of harder to throw it in there with somebody that size.

Q. (Regarding linebackers making more plays.) Is that a sign that maybe you could point to and say we're getting a little bit...

KEITH BUTLER: Yeah, we're hoping to. I think what we got to do is -- everybody in the world, if I'm them, I'm sitting here looking at people run for 200 yards on us a couple times. We got to make sure we kind of hold that down.

We have a goal defensively, and that goal is to keep somebody under 3.7 a rush. Last week we did it even though we gave up over 100 yards. We did that last week. We had 3.6, but we hadn't done that in a while, but that's encouraging that we did that in that game. So we're capable of doing it. We did it first time we played these guys, we held them under 100 yards.

Part of that was being ahead, too. You know, that helps. When you're ahead people don't run the ball as much. They try to daggum throw the ball a little bit more.

So we got to be able to stop the run.

These guys are very good at what they do in terms of running the football. That's the reason I say Chubb is probably one of the better ones in the league, if not the best.

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115763-1-1041 2021-12-30 17:08:00 GMT

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