The Teryl Austin/Defense Complaint Thread (2025)

Sigh, making me do more homework.

In the Mike Tomlin era here are the win/losses for -1, +1, and 0 turnover margin games:



Tomlin has been better than average in close games. Even when -1 TO, he's better than the 30% predicted overall win rate.

 

We talk about since 2019....When Ben was in his prime(2007 to 2018 in the Tomlin era)the steelers had way more yards that the opposing team and it was when the steelers were at their best in the Tomlin era....But since that time,they need to win the turnovers by a big margin especially against very good team to win those games

 

Blast said it best in another thread. I don’t think anyone here is unhappy about getting turnovers and it’s part of the game. It’s that getting that many is not sustainable especially in the playoffs against good teams. So if that’s the only way we can win then we won’t be winning anything come January. You need to have a solid fundamental D that gets off the field on 3rd and long and can cause teams to actually punt. Turnovers are the cherry on top.

 

That's your opinion. The Steelers directly forced five of the six turnovers vs the Colts. W/L/T is the only opinion/stat that matters. I'll take an ugly undeserved win 7 days a week.

 

He’s being a smart ass. He forgot the green font.

 

What You just wrote should end this whole freaking thing.
IMO.....Well done.

 

Good post

None the less some people want to ***** and moan

Some of them need to start new posts to get attention to their bitching and moaning

 

I agree with your point although 99% of the responders do not understand. Another bad thing to consider is the Steelers have only won the time of possession battle once this year (Dillon Gabriel and the Browns). No one in the AFC looks unbeatable. However I still have a hard time seeing them winning the North. The Ravens are coming and they have a super soft schedule. The Steelers need an incredible amount of luck staying healthy. This team is super thin. I do think with how banged up the chargers OL is the Steelers should look great again similar to the Colts game.

 

its weird to want the team to win without turnovers. When we don’t have turnovers the first thing fans point out is how expensive this defense is compared to the rest of the league.

I expect a bunch of forced turnovers EVERY WEEK.

and the fact that we forced 2 of the better teams into 11 turnovers is a positive. Especially when 10 of the 11 turnovers were forced.

 

Were forcing most of these turnovers, thats nothing but good defensive play.

 

Right. And I say without a game with lots of turnovers for us, ( + 2 to +6 ) we are not going to win many games vs. teams with winning records.

Our offense is plain vanilla and our defense is highly suspect vs. the better qb's.

 

You can call it whatever you want, but ball carrier fumbles are far more fluky. I don't agree with that at all. I get that defensive players swipe at the ball or try to put their shoulder pad on the ball when tackling to get fumbles... but they are dependent on the ball carrier's ability to hang onto it (usually due to carrying mechanics), or something else entirely (like the ball carrier extending his arms out at the wrong moment because he got hit low at the exact right time, etc.).

We went and pick-pocketed Danny Jones... earned that money though skill. Rhamondre Stevenson just walked up and gave us a $20 bill. Did we earn that $20 with our dashing good looks? Or did we just have someone hand us a free $20 just because....

 

Yes, I mentioned the interception and the strip sack as "earned" turnovers. Those are definitely created by the defense like 99% of the time. I had only mentioned the ball carrier fumbles because they are so fluky. They don't happen often (even to guys that fumble a lot), and there's a worse than 50/50 chance that the defense recovers the fumble. We got pretty lucky on the fumble rate AND the recovery rate. I don't really care about ball carrier "strips" or "punches" because defensive players rip and punch at the ball all the time... regardless of the ball carrier. It happens every single game. They just know that Stevenson fumbles more than average, so there's a better chance it works.

Stevenson fumbles about once every 56 touches (which is 61% more than NFL average). So yeah, he's more likely to fumble... but we don't only rip at Rhamondre. We do it to everyone. He just is more likely than others to put it on the ground (and twice in the same game is a lot, no matter how much you fumble).

 

So you were in Spinal Tap

 

This makes less sense as the day passes.

 

This is true. We have been really quite bad in yards allowed this year. Its been the main reason why our defense has struggled. We are statistically the 30th ranked defense in the league in yards allowed per game currently (384 yards per game allowed). We have the 32nd ranked passing yards per game allowed (278 ypg) and the 14th ranked run ypg allowed (106 ypg). Our ypc allowed is 4.2 (14th ranked), which is only .1 ypg worse than last season (which had us ranked 4th). Our 3rd down defense is 24th ranked at 42%, and 4th down defense is 27th ranked at 74% allowed. We do have the 2nd best turnover creation defense and the 3rd best sack defense and are the 5th least penalized team in the league. Our red zone defense is good at 53% (good enough for a 7th ranking).

All of these stats tell us pretty much who we are as a defense. We're hot and cold against the run (which makes us a middle of the pack unit), but garbage against the pass. We make up for it by getting after the QB and forcing turnovers and we are pretty good at holding teams to field goals after driving inbetween the 20's on us... Essentially this defense lives and dies by the splash play... which is great when we're getting them, but we lose when we don't. Until the secondary can figure out how to perform better (and get off the damn field on 3rd/4th down) we're going to continue to bleed yards.

 

So the Steelers are not a good team for forcing 6 turnovers? Its called defense and everyone complaining about the payroll of the defense is now complaining that they are doing exactly what we paid them too do. Lets also not forget they shut down the best running back in the league and sacked Jones 5 times.

 

Who is saying the Steelers didn’t play well Sunday and that forcing 5 turnovers isn’t awesome? The reality however is that won’t happen every game so when we get 0 or 1 can the D still produce a win consistently? That’s what a 160 million dollar defense should be able to do without a ton of turnovers. So far they can’t in fact they get steam rolled (Besides the Browns game sorry if that doesn’t impress me)

 

We rank #1 in forced fumbles.
We are tied for 5th in Ints.
We are tied for 10th in QB hurries.


This is how our defense is built.

 

That’s great. Why doesn’t it translate to the playoffs?

 

Sure, when a team has lousy QBs you lose close games. Not such a mystery really. Trubisky, Pickett, Wilson .... none are starters.

 

If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball...

 

3rd in sacks too. It is too bad that the offseason secondary additions haven't helped like we thought. Moving Ramsey to full time FS seems like a good decision (and he's going to do well there). Porter has been largely pretty solid (yeah, I know he still grabs too much... but he can cover well enough) He's not a CB1, but he is probably more than fine as a CB2. If we got a true CB1, I think our defense (as built) could be transformed.

Basically if we can figure out how to cover better on the back end, this defense could actually be really good. We're just not there yet.

 

I hope we get 6 more turnovers against the Chargers but that is extremely unlikely. I would really feel good about our defense if they forced a good LA team to a bunch of 3 and outs and being held to under 20 points. If they do that despite only forcing zero or one turnover that would be impressive and I would feel better about them moving forward.