What are your expectations this year for the Steelers defense?

Yeah Woodley, Porter, and Harrison played in 1995. LoL. Stop being a sheep, hell half the people on here that want him to do it don't even notice when he does do it.

 

No what fans don't understand is OLB aren't DE, and that no OLB in the base 3-4 likes to do it. They are giving up weight, and size, and are giving up their speed advantage, and flexibility, but all it takes is a few guys on tv/podcast/youtube channel saying it, and the uninformed latch onto it like a tick in July on a hound dog.

 

Yeah the Defense lost the playoff game last year. LoL. Did You actually watch the playoff game??
It was 7-6 in the 4th quarter until our Offense decided to fumble for a Texans td, and then throw a pick 6 to the Texans. I'd suggest watching the game again if You thought our D lost the game.

 

Do you know the difference between a OLB , and a DE?? Also like I told someone else, he did do it, and most of You guys never knew it. Hell half of You don't notice anything till it's pointed out, that's why you guys rely so much on what others say. I could show stills from a simple D alignment, and many of You wouldn't even know what we were in.

 

And You totally missed the point.

 

I was referring more to the run defense collapsing and giving up 150+ yards rushing, in the regular season. This is very un-Steeler-like... and it's happening quite often now. This defense is as bad as some of the terrible Bengal defenses I've seen in the past.

 

Our rush D was better than Cleveland, and people think they were a great D last year. We gave up 115 average. Jacksonville had the best rush D, and guess what , they lost their only playoff game. Our rush D was better than the Vikings who many on here said has the DC we should have kept. I believe we were 15th in stopping the run. Too many of you worry about stats that don't matter. Points , sack, and turnovers. That's what matters on D now.

 

I distinctly remember Benton, Queen and Wilson getting abused for big gains on many occasions. Runs right up the middle. I'm gonna do the research on all of the games lost by Steelers in '25 and post rushing totals by opposing teams.

 

I think this is what we know

1. We faced the 2nd most defensive snaps as a team defense (1112 vs IND @ 1114)
2. We faced the 2nd most 3rd downs (236).
3. We had gave up the 4th most 3rd down conversions (98). That allowed 3rd down conversion rate put us 7th worst in the league.
4. We had the 4th most 4th down attempts against (38).
5. So 38.8% of the times we stopped a team on 3rd down, they decided they were better off going for it than punting.
6. Of those 38 4th down attempts, 28 were successful by the opposition (73.7%).
7. That means that of the 236 times we got a team to 3rd down, they got a new set of downs 98 (on 3rd) + 28 (on 4th) times.
8. So 53.4% of the time we got a team to 3rd down, they ended up with a new set of downs.

In previous years, our D would get overworked because the offense wasn't good at staying on the field.

But that wasn't the big driver of all the defensive snaps in 2025.

The D sucked at getting off the field. Without doing this calculation for all the teams in the league, my guess is that we're a bottom 3 team in giving opposing teams a new set of downs.

The guy on Scout's Eye talks about this idea, but I don't know what the stat is called or where it's tracked.

But it's something like "new 1st down %". How many times does your offense get a new set of downs (or a TD) for every 1st down they get.

Seems to me that we were likely brutal at the defensive version of this stat in 2025.

And I think that's the biggest thing we need to fix for next year. Good news is that we were pretty good at this in 2024 (at least 3rd down %), so a quick turnaround doesn't seem impossible.

 

I just told you, and I went , and looked. Again who cares about yards.
Here is what yards given up mean example: 2 of the top 5 teams on D for yards didn't even make the playoffs. None of the top 5 Made the SB.

 

All of these are very important. Most football games are close. And close games are won by high impact plays like sacks and turnovers (and explosive plays and TDs).

But I think the ability to get off the field (3rd and 4th down conversions) is also really important. Particularly if it's something that you're very bad (or very good) at.

We were brutal at getting off the field.

So it should be the low hanging fruit that the coaching staff focuses on.

It should be much easier to go from among the worst in the league to somewhere around average (e.g. 3rd down conversions / yards allowed) than it is to go from 4th in the league (where we are with turnovers) to 1st in the league.

 

Umm....I believe you are missing the point if Your Offense doesn't do anything, Your Defense therefore sees the field more, and therefore will see more 3rd downs. Hell how many times did we watch the D turn the ball over, give it back to the Offense, and then the offense go 3, and out, or at best just get 1 first down.
Again.
Points, turnovers, and sacks. This is what truly matters for today D

 

If we could get off the field, our offense would have more plays. And more drives.

Our offense had the 28th number of plays in the 2025 season.

It's interesting because we've had a low number of plays for a while.

But this year the driver for the poor performance was the D not getting off the field* rather than the O not being able to stay on it.

* We were worse at getting off the field and at generating turnovers in 2025 vs. 2024. But much worse at 3rd down conversions ~ 10% drop. And while the number of turnovers fell from 33 to 27, the ranking only went from 2nd to 4th.

 

I tried to say this at the end, but perhaps wasn't clear enough.

I strongly agree with your conclusion if we apply it to previous years (particularly Kenny/Canada). In those seasons with abysmal offense, our D saw lots of snaps because the offense was all about 3 and outs. In those years, the defense got a **** ton of snaps because the offense didn't give them any rest.

That wasn't really the case the last two years. In 2024 and 2025, the offense was around average re: efficiency.

Last year we were 20th in the league with 38.4% 3rd down conversions on offense. So we were below average. But the ranking here is misleading because we're in the meat of the distribution. Only around 1% away from the median (39.5%). The worst team in the league was minnesota at 31.8%.

On defense, we were terrible at getting off the field. We ranked 26th @ 43.03%. Here the median is ~ 39.8%. So we're 4x further away than we were on offense. And we were just as close to the worst team in the league (Dallas at 47.3%) as we were to the median.

I agree with you that impact plays like turnovers and sacks are important (we were also worst at these stats than we were in 2024). But the defense was unable to get off the field.

I also generally agree with your last statement (that games are normally won and lost on a small number of impactful plays). But it's less true when you really suck at something as fundamental as forcing punts.

 

I care about yards.

 

Appears so did Minnesota, and Cleveland since they were top 5, and didn't even make the playoffs. Guess what stat the top 7 all made the playoffs with.
Turnovers.

 

Wins>yards
Derrick Henry had 94 yards in the first meeting then 126 yards in the second meeting, the Steelers managed to win both games.

 

Both of those teams were bottom-five in offensive yards. That might have had something to do with it.

 

You could say that, but guess what, everyone in the top 5 of turnovers on D made the playoffs, hell the top 7 made the playoffs. Thus my Points, Turnovers, and sacks comments.

 

You brought up two teams low in yardage allowed not making the playoffs and I gave you a strong reason why. It was piss-poor offenses that tanked those teams.

Also, it was only the top six in turnovers that made the playoffs. The Falcons were seventh and missed out.

The Seahawks forced four more turnovers than the Vikings last season. Were those four turnovers really the difference between going 13-3 on the way to a Super Bowl championship and going 9-8 and missing the playoffs? Or was it the Seahawks having a top-10 offense while the Vikings were in the bottom five?

 

Our run defense is capable of both brilliance and disaster.

I mean, against the Lions, it was very shocking that the Lions only had 15 rushing yards in that game, but we've seen games like against the Bills when they ran the same running play, or 2 for the entire second half according to Watt, and the Steelers had no answer.

This run defense is very unpredictable.

 

I can't blame the defense for losing against the texans in the playoffs but at the same time if Stroud would not forget how to play football during the playoffs,the texans would likely have over 500 offensive yards and many more points....I mean the texans offense had 408 offensive yards even if Stroud was missing so many wide open receiver in that game.They could not stop the texans on 3rd down,they were 10-15

 

TJ Watt earning his massive paycheck from multiple starting spots........lol