After a few weeks of appearing to fix their issues in the secondary, the Pittsburgh Steelers were right back to blowing coverages and allowing chunk yardage at inopportune moments in their Week 12 loss to the Chicago Bears. This has gone on in Pittsburgh for quite some time, extending to the last season or two, and players always end up reverting to the same explanation.
“Just communication, that’s the number one thing,” CB Brandin Echols said during his Monday media availability. “Everybody [being] detailed in what they doing. Everybody’s just doing they jobs.”
Defensive coordinator Teryl Austin has even admitted the need to simplify things at multiple points this season. A prime example was after the Minnesota Vikings game in Week 4 when the Steelers allowed an 81-yard gain to Jordan Addison—the play on which Payton Wilson bailed them out with hustle and speed. Austin took the blame for that near disaster in Dublin.
At some point, with new players cycling through the second and third levels of the defense, the communication issues start to point toward coaching and schematic shortcomings.
Echols made more comments Monday that may hint at that after he was asked about the wide-open touchdown the Steelers allowed to DJ Moore in their 31-28 loss to the Bears.
“We just gotta be better. If it is from a player standpoint or a coach standpoint, we just gotta be better altogether,” Echols said. “They just caught us in a situation where we wasn’t picking up the guy in the area and they capitalized on it.”
That isn’t exactly a pointed criticism of the Steelers’ coaching or schematics. If anything, it’s shared blame. But I found it interesting given the backdrop of what defensive quarterback Patrick Queen, who wears the green communication dot on Sundays, said about the defense after the game.
“I think sometimes it was schematic issues that we had,” Queen said via Post-Gazette Sports. “It’s kind of a bad spot to be in, but at the end of the day, we just gotta be better.”
He was also referring to the secondary being in unfavorable alignments to stop some of the things the Bears were doing. Again, he wasn’t placing blame in one area and made sure to mention the need for everybody to play better. But if Queen is willing to say the quiet part out loud, it’s reasonable to wonder if others are thinking the same thing.
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