The Steelers have the third-worst defense in the league when it comes to getting off the field. And unlike HC Mike Tomlin, CB Darius Slay is not about to blame it on the offense—even if that’s part of the problem, too. While short drives on the other side of the ball are a problem, the defense isn’t doing its job, either.
Through the first seven weeks of the season, the Steelers are allowing 3:19 per drive on defense. That ranks 30th in the NFL, and it gets worse from there. They allow 38.1 yards per drive, which is the second-worst in the league. And finally, they allow 7.3 plays per drive—the worst in the NFL.
“That’s on us as a defense. We’ve got to be better. We’ve got to be accountable”, Darius Slay said of the Steelers’ issues getting off the field, as he discussed on the Richard Sherman podcast with, you guessed it, Richard Sherman. “It don’t matter what the call is, we’ve got to execute, just beat the man in front of you as a team and as a player. We’re not the best on third downs. We’re not the best coming out there on three-and-outs. Like, we ain’t playing complementary ball on the defensive side [for a] full game”.
The thing is, while the defense’s numbers are bad, the Steelers’ offensive numbers are right there. They also rank 30th in drive time and 32nd in plays per drive. Their 28.4 yards per drive, however, is only the seventh-worst in the NFL, though, so there’s that. And yet the offense averages the ninth-most points per drive, while the defense ranks 22nd. So what are some of the key issues?
“We’ve got to stop depending on splash plays. That’s what we’ve been living off of for too long, and guys that can manage the ball, control the clock, not force turnovers” take advantage of that against the Steelers’ defense, Slay said. “We’ve got to force the turnovers instead of just trying to wait until they just make a mistake. We’ve got to force them. And that’s why I think we need to just pick it up”.
As we’ve previously looked at, the amount of snaps the Steelers are playing on defense is a serious problem. They are on the field nearly 70 plays per game, and that’s not just because the offense is running so few plays. If they could simply get off the field themselves, they would have to run fewer plays. But when you’re allowing teams to possess the ball for three-plus minutes at over seven plays per drive, that’s what happens.
And just think about how bad that is, a realization I’m coming to literally as I’m writing this. On defense, the Steelers allow more than seven plays per drive on average. That’s the average drive. Last week, for example, the Bengals had six drives of at least seven plays. That’s more than half of their 10 total drives, including two drives of 10-plus plays. On a day when the Steelers’ offense produced 7.3 yards per play.
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