Are the Steelers trying to do too much on defense? Dan Orlovsky thinks so, and he thinks they’re playing themselves into disarray. If you watch the team weekly you do see some worrying indicators of this, of course. Seeing two players waving their arms in frustration at each other behind a scoring opponent is becoming a thing. Both of them know the other guy was wrong, but the important thing is they weren’t right or wrong together.
And it’s killing them. “I think when they try to throw the curveball, they confuse themselves”, Orlovsky said on ESPN’s NFL Live. “There’s so many times when I watch this Steelers defense on tape, I [think], ‘I don’t even know what you’re doing right now’. They’re trying to be at times so unique and creative that they run themselves out of coverage, run themselves out of gaps”.
The Steelers’ defense is, by several metrics, among the worst in the NFL right now. The team ranks 22nd in points allowed, 30th in yards allowed, and 32nd in passing yards allowed. On a per-drive basis, the Steelers rank 30th or worse in drive time, plays, and yards allowed. By now, they’ve fallen to 25th in points allowed per drive. And yet they rank ninth in opponents’ average starting field position, so that’s not the issue.
This past game, the Steelers fielded only 10 players on defense for a Packers two-point play. HC Mike Tomlin downplayed the issue, noting that running a lot of different personnel can sometimes cause such confusion.
In other words, what Dan Orlovsky said about the Steelers’ defense. They are trying to do more than they can handle doing, so perhaps it’s time to start simplifying. Perhaps if you don’t want Darius Slay playing more than 50 percent of the snaps then he shouldn’t play at all. Or maybe make him the dime defender or something else. But you can’t play with 10 players and expect to win.
Even when the result isn’t disastrous, the Steelers are still struggling to communicate on defense. And now that they are losing DeShon Elliott, one of their primary communicators, we can hardly anticipate improvement.
Tomlin, of course, welcomes the multiplicity of duties among his players, fully embracing “sub-package football”. He’s been barking up that tree for years and has been putting it into practice. Two years ago, he brought Patrick Peterson into the Steelers’ defense hoping he could move throughout the secondary. Before him, they had Cameron Sutton as that type of player. Now they’re trying it with Jalen Ramsey, and the results are…not what they paid for.
So at what point do they pull back and attempt to streamline things? Earlier this week, Darius Slay talked about how everybody is still learning each other and how to play together. We’re on Hallow’s Eve, though. That excuse doesn’t fly anymore. If the Steelers can’t play cohesively on defense by now, they need to simplify things.
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