Ok Am I Missing Something.

With a 67% success rate the Steelers are due for another QB failure in Rd1, bringing them back down to 50%.

 

Claypool was a second round pick.

 

The Steelers switched to a 3-4 long before Cowher arrived. The first season I watched every game I could was 1984 and I know that team ran a 3-4. Mike Merryweather and Bryan Hinkle were the outside linebackers with Robin Cole and David Little inside.

The major change Cowher did make was to go from Noll's preferred trap-heavy run game out of a pro set with the fullback often getting the bulk of the carries to a lot more I-formation with the tailback carrying the load. That led to Barry Foster's monster season in Cowher's first season as head coach.

 

I've always thought that Steelers message boards get really too into what coaches say in the media. They do not say the truth - ever. Then everyone runs with it like it is holy writ. It is PR nonsense. All that being said...I'm gonna guess the Steelers defense looked amazing in practice against the Steelers offense.

The team did misevaluate a great number of veteran signings. Slay, Ramsey, Clark, Peppers, Dugger, etc. were all players with obvious issues. The team appeared to roll the dice on those guys getting it together one last time over a bunch of never were guys randomly having a good year. And I can totally understand that rationale and chain of thought. And to be fair...some of them were "emergency" type signings or trades.

I think Echols is the most interesting case. Was he an improvement over Beanie Bishop? Absolutely? Did he repeatedly get cooked during the season and chronically exposed against the Texans? Absolutely. I think that Echols and Slay signings are instructive cases about FA's...they are available either because they have clear and obvious flaws or they are too old. Then you get the random "unicorn" FA signings were an undervalued guy flourishes in a new environment like Elliot. But FA is usually a bad bet.

At some level, I think the team knows this as well. Look at the LB and DL level of the defense. They have pivoted away from FA signings there as more and more of their own draft picks have seized success and established expanded roles. Hopefully, in another draft cycle or two, they get Porter a couple more friends to run around with at DB.

I also believe that the 2025 Steelers defense could have been much better if the offense was able to play complementary football more often. We saw flashes of that when the offense experienced success, held onto the ball, and scored TDs. The defense was able to come after people and that lead to chaos, sacks, and turnovers. But with the offense being kind of a joke, teams could just avoid what the Steelers defense was good at and just slowly wear them down.

 

Was already discussed, and I already said I had forgotten that. This is what happens when people just jump in. No biggie though. I've done the same before.
Believe me I know all about Foster.

 

Hmm
To add to this. Ravens with Lamar Jackson hire a Defensive minded HC.
But I'm making stuff up. LoL

 

That combined with a full commitment to zone blitz principles...which I believe the 3-4 under Noll and his staff was not as committed to. My memory gets foggy right about at that point though...

 

There is an odd circular logic to it all.

Pair a playmaking QB with a defensive guru. Hope that your playmaking QB just figures it out on offense with minimal help from the coaches. Then the defensive guru "fixes" that side of the ball with restricted cap dollars and resources.

Or, alternatively, go at it like the Rams do and just pair an offensive guru with a great Qb and get all the weapons you can...

 

I think basically every NFL team is a nickle team now anyway.

What we used to think of as "base" defenses are essentially now the sub packages.

Maybe the pendulum swings back. But I think that only happens if they somehow change the rules so that they benefit the passing game less (or undo all the rule changes they've done to promote passing). And I can't imagine the league does that.

 

I wasn't sure when they made the switch. I just knew it was sometime between 1979 and 1984.

 

I am fairly certain the zone blitz came later. I don't think they used it much, if at all, when Dungy was the DC.

 

Yup. I've had it happen to me, too.