Pittsburgh tackle
Pittsburgh tackle
The season of change is a way to describe the 2026 Pittsburgh Steelers. Among those changes was no live tackling in offseason practices. This caused many to wonder how it would impact tackling in games. It made me curious to investigate the stats this preseason, our first opportunity to evaluate this question.
Here is a visual of preseason missed tackle stats for defenses. I went back to 2023 to see how Pittsburgh and the rest of the league fared in the stat:
Right away, we see that no live tackling this offseason did not have a negative impact on missed tackles for Pittsburgh’s defense. That number came in at 20, which ranked fifth for the 2026 preseason and was their best missed-tackle result since 2023 (17).
In the previous two years (when there was live tackling), Pittsburgh had 30-plus missed tackles. This was well below the 23.7 league average in the four-year span. So there clearly isn’t a direct correlation between live tackling and better in-game results.
A benefit was a cleaner bill of health heading into the regular season, so the risk-to-reward seems like a no-brainer after evaluating the data. More teams aren’t live tackling in practice with each passing year, and the vast majority of defenses had fewer missed tackles in the 2026 preseason than bottom teams of prior seasons. There were two exceptions in 2026: the Los Angeles Rams (38) and Cleveland Browns (39), the two worst marks in the span.
While many Steelers fans wanted change for quite some time, many questioned and were even resistant to the idea of no live tackling in practice. The improvements are undeniable and refreshing heading into the regular season.
But the real games start for Pittsburgh on Sunday. Hopefully better missed tackle results carry over from the preseason right away in Week 1 while facing Atlanta running back Bijan Robinson. He led the NFL last season with 86 forced missed tackles (18 more than any other player).
Talk about a litmus test.