What would you fix on Steelers Defense?

it would be absurd to you because you are clueless.

highest paid defense in the GAME.

STAR STUDDED left and right with a HC who is way past his prime.

they thought it was a BYE WEEK!!!!

Offense is playing with NO LINE, NO RB's and a JV QB right now, in a new system. THEY WILL struggle.

 

PREDICTABLE = TOMLIN and AUSTIN

 

I don't disagree at all. (I mentioned "Stale")

 

That's been my biggest problem with Tomlin/Austin defense's. Too predicable, always the same. They count on outside rushers, with soft zone behind them. Change it sometimes and bring some heat from other sources when the usual defense dose not work.

 

You are correct in alot of what you are saying. I have even heard it said multiple times that we don’t disguise coverages or blitzes much. We simply line up our front four and dare you to beat us. I’m not sure there is any tendency thing here as I don’t believe we rely or use analytics much. Tomlin has in fact boasted about that and the fact we are a vanilla defense. The issue is when they stop our four man front we literally have no answers. I don’t believe for a second that Austin wields any power in that Defensive room. Nor do I believe he has any say in scheme, erpsonel groupings or play calling. That is all Tomlin. Tomlin wants to maximize aggression with his front four and essentially use the secondary and ILB’s as a prevent defense. Teams with accurate QB’s who get a little bit of time pick us apart time and time again. On the run side he has rendered the ILB’s useless because he is so conservative with them. He doesn’t protect them at all and the outside contain is non existent on this defense especially on the side opposite of TJ.

Tomlin is too big of a personality on the team to be challenged by any of the defensive coaches. I believe he has a massive ego and while at times it can be beneficial leading players and drawing players to the team it can be detrimental to the team as far as his coordinators wielding much say or input. I think it is similar to the Jerry Jones effect in Dallas on a much smaller scale. We have alot of talent on the defensive side and it is being wasted as far as I am concerned.I keep seeing the same issues year after year after year since Lebeau left and we keep throwing higher pedigree players at the issues but they never get resolved.

 

correct - some of us were clearly worried about that. DALLAS will attempt to run that way also on SUN night

 

You do you, man.

 

I WISH my CO would give me ONE!!!!

 

Coming from you clueless is a compliment. Where have you heard these things about the oline, qb room, and coordinator? Oh that’s right it was me.

 

Nobody is saying that the offense doesn’t matter. But we built the team we built and the fact is the supposed strength of this team is the defense This is where we put all of our money. Tomlin has come out and said the game plan is to keep the score low, run the ball and maintain possession, don’t lose the turnover battle and that formula should win you alot of games. The issue I have is he gaslights us with all of this bravado talk and not playing in your fears and yet we come out with a very fear driven game plan on defense. Then to make matters worse we don’t even adjust the game plan when they have a completely different QB enter the game.

I understand why he does what he does with certain elements of the game plan but if those are counter to what your players strengths are then either change the game plan or change the player. What I am saying is don’t play zone defense as much as we do with Porter when that is obviously not his strength. When you have an immobile QB back there and we can’t create pressure with a four man rush then blitz the guy. If the ILB’s are struggling in coverage then bring them to the line of scrimmage and man handle the war’s or TE’s or Rb’s to throw off the timing and throw in some blitzes off that. We do not know how to coach up these guys in zone coverage. They all look like statues back there especially the linebackers. Yet we have two of the most athletic ILB’s back there.

Were even doing this little bit on the offensive side with Najee. Running more outside and inside zone when he clearly can’t find the cut back lane he lacks the vision and lateral agility to make the cut. At least we were smarter enough to not extend him and see if he would that style of blocking. They need to do more power schemes with him right now as that seems to be the only scheme he can run in.

 

The funniest thing about your dumbass rant. You claim I’m clueless because I blame both the offense and defense. Then you turn around blame the defense, the coach, and the offense. You can’t make this crap up. You sit there banging away at the screen thinking this will show them how smart I am not realizing you just prove yourself the fool with every post.

 

Except Dallas doesn't have any good RBs, Zeke Elliott is their starter?

 

Agree on all three points. Specially 2 and 3. When TJ goes down or even highsmith apparently, our pass rush goes to the toilet and thats because we dont blitz. Austin or Tomlin probably think we’ll expose the backfield and get burned. I dont get that, maybe Austin and Tomlin are simply not good enough to design effective blitz packages so they try to be cautious

we’ve been playing 10 yds off for a while. Never liked it. I think we have the personnel like you said, who can play press.

Austin should go, along with Meyer, probably Tomlin too. Coaching is not always the problem but for this team, coaching has been subpar for a long while.

 

The Steelers did change some staff around, but it is mostly youth without a lot of experience.

They brought in Aaron Curry who was a Seattle LB coach, he doesn't have a lot of experience.
Grady Brown is the secondaries coach, he only has 3 years in the league... nice guy but sheeze.
They list 7 coaches with one being a Quality Control Coordinator.

Dunbar and Austin are the mainstays.

It kind of reminds me of a Nutting operation, just enough to get by.

 

They gave up 27 points. They struggled to stop anything in the first half. The offense put together its best game of the season and it wasn't enough because the defense was picked apart by a middling offense.

 

I have rarely seen a defense turn the ball over.

I said it was a total team failure. But I believe the defense was a bit more responsible for the loss.

Yes the offense and Fields had gaffs for sure but at least Fields tried to will the team back. Which was a positive to me.

Again still a total team failure including Tomlin and the coaching staff.

 

The offense turned the ball over twice. You should check the winning percentage of teams that have done the same

 

Yup. A few posters here did bring that up as a potential problem before the game. I was one of them.

 

it is low, that is for sure.

BUT - this defense is BUILT to produce TO's and we should have / could have zero'd that out. the D SUCKED. PAID most in the NFL to be tops and they were not and maybe ARE not, in large part due to poor coaching and strategy.

lucked out that Herbert left early the previous week....

wake up Tomlin , wake up

 

Thats what your going with. Completely ignoring all the other overwhelming evidence to point to the disastrous defensive effort. If it isn’t on the defense then why pay so much for a defense? We might as well not go out and sign a Patrick Queen or extend Heyward or Watt. Both units need to compliment each other. The offense certainly hurt their chances of win ning with those two turnovers but again the expectation and responsibility is more so on the defense. Tomlin has come out and said that. The Offense has alot of young players. A ton of injuries and a new Coordinator. We expect mistakes and hiccups along the way with that unit. The Defense has tenured veterans with high pedigree and additional high priced free agents along with it being the most expensive defense in the league it is also coached directly by Tomliin. The expectation is much higher for the defense to perform than it is the offense. The fact they gave up 27 points should have been 30 points (missed field goal) is way more alarming than the offense having two turnovers. You know that. Your just too far down this road in this debate to retract your previous thoughts. It’s called pride and ego it’s the same thing that Tomlin is dealing with and the very reason why we lost this game because of his pride and ego in coaching the defense.

 

Apparently yall have serious issues with reading comprehension. From the very beginning I’ve blamed both the offense and the defense, but you choose to ignore it. The offense’s job is to score points and not turn the ball over. They did that twice and an additional time on downs. When a team is -2 in turnover differential you lose over 70%. Never once said the defense was perfect. Only that they don’t deserve the majority of the blame. Oh look at that back to the old mainstay of make bs up about someone you’ve never met or spoken with and claim it as fact

 

I like your suggestions. The other suggestion is show Queen how to tackle . his missed tackles are brutal and costing this team. Not at all what I expected when he became a Steeler.. Underwhelming at this point.

 

you can do better

this DEFENSE has to and should dominate. They did not.

that is the primary reason with what happened on Sunday

i know it hard for you to comprehend.