After two consecutive brutal performances, everyone is looking for somebody to blame for the Pittsburgh Steelers’ endless defensive struggles. As a result, Teryl Austin’s caught a lot of heat. However, he’s certainly not the only coach looking over that defense, as Mike Tomlin plays a major role as well. And that’s who analyst Warren Sharp blames for Sunday’s poor performance against the Green Bay Packers.
“The Steelers are who they are and play a very predictable brand of football. And that brand of football, defensively, involves a ton of blitzing,” Sharp said recently on his YouTube channel. “The Steelers are one of the most predictable teams in the NFL. The Mike Tomlin strategy might work, because he faces enough mediocre-to-bad quarterbacks throughout the season who struggle versus the blitz. And Tomlin lets his opponents lose games, rather than Tomlin winning games himself, with tactics, with strategy, with ingenuity.”
Sharp is not wrong that Tomlin likes to blitz. During the first seven weeks of the season, the Steelers played Cover 3 the most, using it on 34 percent of their defensive snaps. But their next highest was man coverage with one deep safety, And Cover 1, which they played 28 percent of the time, is an alignment from which they like to blitz. That means nearly two-thirds of their defensive snaps have been played in just two coverages.
Making things more predictable, the Steelers will practically tell you which one they’re in. Cover 1 and Cover 3 can look similar, since both have one deep safety. However, the alignment of the Steelers’ cornerbacks will usually tell you all you need to know. You can see how close the cornerbacks are playing here, with the Steelers blitzing from Cover 1.
Compare that to this play, where the Steelers are in Cover 3 with cornerbacks much farther off the line of scrimmage.
Might not seem like a big deal in the overall picture of the game, but look at the YAC here because of missed tackles. A rare play where Love holds the football a little longer turns into an easy first down in the 3Q and right after a Steelers FG. #Steelers #NFL pic.twitter.com/hAz4v5Xz8n
— Steelers Depot 7⃣ (@Steelersdepot) October 29, 2025
And even here, the Steelers don’t play good enough defense. They still give up the underneath route and also leave the tight end wide open toward the bottom of the screen.
Running just those two schemes, Sharp thinks Mike Tomlin and his staff are far too simple.
“Zero sense, whatsoever. Zero game-plan strategy, about what to do versus this particular opponent,” Sharp said. “You don’t adjust your strategy at all, make any in-game adjustments to help your defense even more. This coaching staff is a problem.”
Really, one of the Steelers’ biggest issues is their lack of disguises. When there’s one deep safety and the corners are in press coverage, the opposing quarterback knows exactly what to do. Out of the handful of matchups on the field, there’s likely a mismatch he can locate pre-snap. He can take the snap, take a drop step and quickly sail the ball down the field into one-on-one coverage, as Jordan Love did Sunday.
Or, since he knows the linebackers will blitz up the middle, he can throw a quick slant over the middle like Joe Flacco did two weeks ago. And when the Steelers are in Cover 3, you can expect the flat, or really any underneath route, to be open. These coverages would work much better if the Steelers better disguised them before bringing pressure. Then, the quarterback would have to process everything post-snap. But when you continually show your hand, like this defense does, the blitz doesn’t matter since the quarterback already knows where he’s going with the ball.
Mike Tomlin’s won a lot of games as a head coach. But with each passing week it’s getting harder and harder to defend his defense. Especially when it’s beat in the exact same ways every week.
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