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Former Buffalo Bills team captain Tyler Matakevich is returning to the city where his NFL career started.
The Pittsburgh Steelers announced on July 17 that they signed the linebacker and special teams ace to a one-year contract. Matakevich first came into the league with the Steelers as a seventh-round draft pick in 2016, spending four seasons there before moving to Buffalo and spending the next four with the Bills.
The signing will give Matakevich a new start with a team that the Bills knocked out of the playoffs last season.
Linebacker Made Big Impression in Pittsburgh
As the Steelers team website noted, Matakevich gained a reputation as one of the league’s top special teams players during his stints in Pittsburgh and Buffalo.
“He has made his impact mainly on special teams in his career, and it’s been a significant impact, with 64 special teams tackles in his career,” the report noted. “In his last season with the Steelers in 2019, he was tied for the NFL lead with 16 special teams tackles, which was a career-high for him, with 14 of them solo stops.”
Matakevich also filled in at linebacker for the Bills at times, recording an interception in the team’s 2021 season. He was seen as a leader in the locker room, being selected as a special teams captain three times with the Bills.
He returns to a Steelers team that finished 10-7 last season, earning a wild card spot before the Bills knocked them out of the playoffs in a 31-17 victory in January.
Some insiders thought the Bills would part ways with Matakevich one year earlier. Syracuse.com’s Ryan Talbot predicted before final roster cuts last season that Matakevich would end up a cap casualty.
“He seems to be a favorite of Sean McDermott, but Matakevich missed a good chunk of the summer with a calf injury,” Talbot wrote in a story published August 23. “With Matakevich getting older, Buffalo moves on from the veteran. Matakevich’s $2.5 million salary is fully guaranteed, but the team moved on from a bigger dead cap hit last year (O.J. Howard) so I’m not ruling it out.”
New Faces in Buffalo
The Bills have made some big changes on their roster in the past few months, releasing or trading a number of key veteran players — especially among the team captains.
The team selected eight captains last season across all three phases of the game, but only two are still on the active roster as the team nears the start of training camp this year. The Bills released some of them during a stretch in early March, including safety Jordan Poyer and center Mitch Morse. Others, like wide receiver Gabe Davis and safety Micah Hyde, were not brought back in free agency. Wide receiver Stefon Diggs was also traded to the Houston Texans.
Bills general manager Brandon Beane admitted that trading the team’s top wide receiver was a difficult move, but a necessity from a salary cap standpoint.
“A player of his caliber, you weigh a lot of things in those situations,” Beane said in an appearance on The Athletic Football Show. “But ultimately, we just talked about the cap. I don’t need to go through all the reasons why we decided to go ahead and do that. I would say, from a cap standpoint, we decided just to go ahead and eat it now.”
