Defensive Creativity

This struck me after watching most of the Giants' game against the Bengals tonight. They were so much more creative defensively than the Steelers.

Both teams had a similar issue this week. Both normally have two strong edge rushers, but injuries have robbed them of their guy on one side. The Giants compensated by moving Brian Burns around and doing things to create opportunities for him to make plays. It worked quite often. He seemed to take up residence in Joe Burrow's face.

The Steelers just don't do that nearly enough with Watt. Burns is not better than Watt, but he had a better scheme working for him today.

Yes, the defense got the job done today, but a lot of that was the Raiders' incompetence. O'Connell is terrible. They were missing their top three receivers. They shot themselves in the foot with stupid mistakes, including the penalty that wiped out a touchdown that would have brought the Raiders within one score. Few teams are that incompetent offensively. Aaron Rodgers hasn't been great this season, but he's going to be a much tougher challenge next week. If Highsmith is out, The Steelers can't just line up Watt in the same spot all game and expect him to just beat double-teams.

 

I would say Watt did fine forcing two turnovers one saving a TD and one helping score a TD. Burns had an impact but not that.

 

Burns had a huge impact as a pass rusher. He had only one sack, but he was in Burrow's face many other times.

Watt had a great game, though his impact was mostly in run defense. He wasn't much of a factor as a pass rusher, which is the area I'm talking about.

 

Actually saw TJ deep defending pass's instead of rushing on always rushing on pass plays. Why?

 

To me it seems as if Austin/Tomlin are content winning defensively by relying on their players winning each play rather than being situationally creative. To the OP's point, what would it hurt to move Watt around? Or Herbig when he's healthy?

 

I suppose that depends on what you would like to do with him. Watt has said he doesn't care for rushing from the right side so maybe he doesn't move around because he would care not to. If the best defensive player in the league tells the coaches he's most comfortable rushing from the left side, it would be in their best interest to listen.

https://steelersnow.com/t-j-watt-explains-why-he-hates-playing-on-the-right-side/

 

Watt did what he did out of pure talent and football IQ. Not sure if the scheme contributed to any of that

 

I think TJ Watt wrecks the other team's offense even when he is on the bench.
I don't know if Austin is a DC with enough skills to determine different ways to deploy the weapon known as TJ.

 

Watt was a monster yesterday but as you stated they should move him around. I don't see them moving him though. Also when he is neutralized they need contributions from others. Highsmith would be a welcome addition if he is healthy.

Nickle on the 2 yard line as Benton the young gun trots off the field leaving Heyward and Ogunjobi. TD for the Faders. Why? Nickle? The secondary is a concern. Now your going against Rodgers. The defense to me seems vanilla at times no creativity, no thinking out of the box. How about some blitz packages? Something different.

Bright spot beside Watt is Elliot. He just makes plays. Great pick up.

But it was good to see a team beating itself and not us.

 

Not against some creativity, but Watt is doing just fine where he is lined up. I'm not messing with that.

 

He is great wherever they play him. The pass rush, however, has largely disappeared since Herbig was injured. That needs to change or this season is going to go south very quickly.

 

From what I've seen, the defensive philsophy is "we're gonna stop you with talent and/or athletes."

Everything looks great until players get injured and there's a drop off in, you guessed it, talent and athletecism.

Aaron is gonna carve us up lol.

 

The defense is vanilla most of the time and it has been that way for a long time. They rely on four guys to get pressure far too often. Yesterday, they finally went with some blitzes against the run and pass, mostly because the Raiders gave them nothing to fear in the passing game. It was a glance at what opposing defenses get to do to the Steelers.

 

I have been screaming from the mountain tops about the lack of creativity on Defense with Tomlin. I am not even worried about moving Watt around. The bigger issue is we really rely on the four man rush way too much with very little Blitzing and when we do blitz were not very creative at disguising it and our delayed blitzes aren’t schemed really well. We need alot of work on blitzing more effectively and we need to use the blitz alot more.

The defense rely’s so heavily on Watt and turnovers that we truly are a bend but don’t break defense. It is a risky way of playing defense. Against better QB’s and Receivers we totally rely on a big splash play from Watt or someone else. I would much rather see us stop giving up long sustained drives and produce more thre and outs. The Raiders had a second string QB in and literally no receivers. We had one guy we had to worry about in coverage in Bowers and they still drove down the field on us. This style of defense isn’t gonna win us games against the better offenses in this league. The back end of the defense is way to conservative. We play way to much two high safety with a soft szone coverage to keep the receivers in front of us and they ask them to tackle the catch and hopefully eventually the qb will make a mistake and we will intercept it.

I would prefer to see more mana to man press coverage with disguised blitzes and utilize the speed of our inside linebackers both on run and pass blitzes. But we're too darn conservative. That game yesterday is a very different game if Watt doesn’t cause that fumble at the goal line and we don’t get gifted the roughing the passer penalty to negate the Fields interception in the red zone. The game in alot of ways wasn’t much different than the two previous games that we lost in my mind. A couple splash plays mad or not made ...made all the difference.

I have yet to see us impose our will on a team offensively or defensively this year. I have yet to see us consistently drive the ball down the field for four or five series in a game and consistently force three and outs five or six times a game. Thats what I am looking for from our team. Then and only then will I consider it a dominant performance and a team that can contend with the Chiefs, Lions, Ravens and Forty Niners of the NFL.

 

Yes , yes and yes. totally agree with your assessment. Thats exactly what I am talking about with Tomlin playing too conservatively. He plays in his fears too often. We were threatened by their QB or receivers so we were more confident in blitzing. We need to do alot more blitzing against better competition. It makes a huge difference in generating pressure. It really shows Tomlin lacks confidence in the guys on the back end. Its the same way he coaches the QB. He is afraid to open up the offense or take more shots down field which again shows a lack of confidence in the QB.

The thing is the players pickup on this and when their coach lacks confidence in them they play with less confidence. I really wish he would take the reigns off and let thee guys play alot more freely. I get situational football is all the rage and very important but Tomlin has literally shamed the games to the extent its all about keeping the game close and limiting mistakes and letting it come down to the last one or two series of the game. I feel like every single game is ugly and a nail biter with the exception of yesterday only because of Watt and the penalties that went in our favor.

 

We have old, boring schemes on both sides.

 

I agree. No innovation, creativity or risk taking. Lets keep the game close. Who cares about giving up long drives down the field ... lets just focus on creating turnovers, and limiting them to field goals. I truly believe his philosophy is let them throw it 50 times. They are bound to make a mistake sooner or later and then that is when we get our interception or fumble recovery, etc. The issue is those long sustained drives we give up keeps the defense on the field and that in and of itself heathens the risk of injury to star players and it wears the defense down to where we aren’t the same defense by seasons end. Last year I felt like half of our defense was injured by the playoffs. Its not a good philposhy and it isn’t winning football against better offenses and QB’s.

 

The only problem is the lack of creativity and playing conservatively with a soft shell defense andnfour man rush is it doesn’t work against good QB’s or offenses. It tells me Tomlin doesn’t trust his players in particular the CB’s and safeties and ILB’s if he is afraid to blitz. It also tells me he wants to string the game out wether we have a long drive or give up a long drive it keeps the game close and runs out the clock and thus it truly does make it about who makes the splash plays and least amount of mistakes at he end of the game. He doesn’t have full faith in the offense either so by keeping the games close you don’t put as much pressure on the offense. We aren’t gong to be able to play like this against better teams. He is going to have to be more aggressive both on offense and defense if we want to beat the Chiefs and Ravens and some of these other teams.

 

I watched the Saints/Buccs and Todd Bowles' defense had a free rusher harassing Rattler on nearly every play. The way they could disguise who was coming pre-snap was an absolute clinic. Fun to watch.