Our coaches and defense had no damn clue......

We actually played some man to man, and got burned worse than in zone... they adjusted to zone.

This whole "no gameplan, no adjustments, zone is dumb" fan base narrative is elementary nonsense.

 

No he didn't

 

What really happened to the defense pretty much play by play, in the end it came down to a poor game plan and poor coaching:

https://www.all22.com/nfl/pittsburgh-steelers-defensive-gameplan-new-england-patriots

 

I agree with everything stated relative to what was called, why it was called, and why it didn't work.

I disagree with the ultimate conclusion that this was as much about gameplan as it was about execution. The big plays, and the ones that put points on the board were not gameplan failures, as much as they were execution failures in coverage and reads. We came in with a gameplan that was honest with who we are and who the Pats are. This game was always going to be about holding for a few FGs (instead of giving up TDs), controlling the clock with the run, and scoring to keep pace.

This was a game defined much more by poor execution (coverage breakdowns and dropped passes), than it was about gameplans and scheme.

 

You have to teach them how to execute before they can do it, especially when you have 3 rookies on defense and an absence of communication doesn't help, if Butler is happy playing zone without a pass rush to lead it then he is only fooling himself... ....

 

Are we still attempting to find or salvage reasons for the loss?



It was a complete team failure. This is not rocket science where me or others need to go in depth on how coverages were lacking in execution, how tackling was lacking in fundementals on so on.



As such, it is a nothing more than a good old but kicking. New England outplayed and out coached us. I tip my hat off them.



We need to prioritize more energy of focusing what we need to do to get back to the big game as opposed to lamenting something that has come and gone.

 

I am going to get out of this quick. Ben is the best player on the team. period. Timmons might fall on my short list of second placers. In closing, moving on. I'm checking out of this hospital.

 

So, for me to understand defense I need to know "scheme" and all kinds of other nuances, but for me to understand Ben's entire career at QB I just need to look at one stat?

 

I agree with some of what you said but we play zone as our based defense. I have never seen them look so unprepared. Actually, these coaches and players have been around long enough to know zone doesn't work against Brady. Even if the players excluded the game plan 80 percent better than they did the result would of been the same. IMO. The coaches should of never consider the zone as an option based on games against the Patriots. Porter, Harrison, Gay all should of stood up and said something to Butler. I couldn't imagine how he defended that game plan in front of those veterans.

 

Thanks for the article.
This pretty much sums it up:
"Brady’s numbers against Tomlin-led Steelers defenses now stand at a gaudy 71.7 percent completion percentage, 2,273 yards, 21 touchdowns, and 0 interceptions. “We stand by what we did, we didn’t do it well enough.” Tomlin said after the game. But that’s simply foolish. And Tomlin is no fool. The plan was a poor one: lacking variety, disguise and creativity.

In the biggest game of their season the Steelers dropped the ball. Their staff was outcoached and the players were outexecuted."

 

So please enlighten me with your short sighted wisdom. You did watch the game? Having Harrison and Dupree in coverage was brilliant right? And rushing 3 was a knock out punch? And man to man? When? How many plays? The game plan was the SAME as it's been against them. With previous Defenses! So what's it all about? And elementary? You did watch the game? Major fail. Game plan and execution...

 

I know you weren't directing your post at me, but I do remember some man to man coverage in the second half(the announcers commented on it)but it was too little too late, and didn't make a difference at that point anyway. It's over now, my grieving is done, I'm moving on.

 

In my dumbass opinion it appeared to me that our secondary was actually arguing with each other after they continuously got burned.

 

I personally think a zone D would work IF we could 1. get pressure on Brady and 2. bump the receivers to throw off their timing and give the rush a chance to get there. Brady likes to get rid of the ball quick so u need to be physical with the receivers at the line. As we saw, when the Steelers did blitz it was not effective because the receivers were running freely. Like someone else mentioned we'll never know why they chose to play soft zone, maybe they were afraid of getting beat deep I don't know, even still hogan managed to get behind the D how many times. Ohh well, on to the draft

 

I am in the position to have people work for me and we all have projects that need to be briefed before we execute them. And if they don't pass the common sense test, I send them back to the drawing board.

That being said, if Butler would of brought this plan to my office, I would of slapped him with it and sent him back to his office. How in good conscience could you defend this plan? Nothing indicated we could get pressure with 4 DL, past games have demonstrated zone doesn't work, and other inferior quarterbacks have pick apart our zone defense. And we waltz into a hostile environment against the best quarterback over the last decade with this. Brady was grinning ear to ear when we took the field. Asinine.

 

Anyone see the Steelers Depot Article. Apparently Patriots went 4-wide 12 times all year before this game...

They went 4-wide 14 times in the first half?

I guess it was pretty brilliant by Bellicheck because it rendered Timmons and Shazier useless by taking them out of the action. Butler probably did not anticipate they he should have gone with dime packages in this game, which takes a few of our LB's off the field.

http://www.steelersdepot.com/2017/0...ed-four-receiver-personnel-grouping-steelers/

 

I wish I was paying attention to our defense more than I did during the game. I was too busy watching Brady scan the field, adjust his uniform, wave to his wife in the stands, make a cell phone call prior to each of his passes. It was reported he threw 43 passes and not one was defended. Do you realize how horrible that stat is ? Is it still a stat when the defense doesn't try or doesn't know what to do ?

 

You know what's stupider than playing zone without a pass rush
Playing man without a rush.

When you put Gay on Edelman in the slot, in man coverage... you get chewed up for 50 yards on one play.
When you for force Edelman to find holes in zone, you give up 6-10 yards... at a time. Every snap becomes an opportunity to end a drive, where as in Man, every mistake turns the game.

We tried to go man a handful of times in the 2nd half... and each time, the game got further away from us.

This myth that we didn't try to adjust (zone to man), we did... and our defense played even worse, so we adjusted back to zone.

 

I really think the Steelers have given up on trying to defend against their offense and we are supposed to out score their offense. In any event, the Patriots own our Steelers and coaching staff.

 

If we executed properly, the score could've been 14-13 Steelers at half time... (steelers score 2nd TD, hold for FG instead of flea flicker TD)

If Ben executes the deep ball to DHB.... that's 21-20 steelers in the 3rd.

The gameplan looks bad because of poor execution. There's no magic "stop Brady" scheme. He destroys man as easily as he destroys zone. The idea that more of Burns and Gay in man would've netted a better result is just silly fan talk.

The idea that we would just throw out our base scheme in the AFCCG for a scheme we don't have the talent to run regularly, is dumber than any idea the coaching staff came up with for this game

 

Dupree spot dropped to the wrong location at least 3 times (I haven't re-watched the All 22 for the 4th quarter yet). We got burned bad on 2 of those plays. That's not bad scheme, that's bad execution.

I'll have to back to give you the specific plays... regarding man to man. One of them was on Hogan's long YAC reception against Gay (you can catch a clip in the link previously provided by Diamond). You can also see Man coverage in the 1st quarter in the 1st clip.

A bad habit of steelers fans on the internet = assuming that every time a corner is off the line (not in man-press) that it's zone coverage.... it's not.

 

Hopefully, your project managers slapped you back with data, that showed Brady is the greatest QB of all time against the blitz.

You don't stop Tom Brady, you hope to contain there scoring output with bend don't break football. You do that by not putting yourself into "burnable" situations (blitzing and man coverage). The zone scheme was the CORRECT scheme to run against this opponent. We ran it terribly. If you want to place blame accurately on the coaches you should do it in the context of not being prepared for 4WR sets, and our players not being able to communicate and execute responsibilities correctly in those sets.

Mike Tomlin and co. got outcoached... but the fan base has the narrative all wrong.

 

CORRECT