Cover 2 Exposed - A NE Primer

Well, JuJu was the star of the show, but the defense won the game for us. The offense should be buying dinner for the D and JuJu.

But enough happy thoughts. It's time to get serious.

What we saw Stafford do to our healthy, prepared, no-available-excuses cover 2 was painful. Not because it was embarrassing. Not because it dropped us statistically out of 1st place in pass defense. But because it showed two things:

1) a top tier qb will (as always) destroy us unless we can match up man to man

2) we don't make adjustments to counter the other team's strengths and effectiveness

NE will NOT lay an egg in the red zone like the Lion's did. I hate to take anything away from our defense's performance in the red zone, but we got damn lucky.

If the coaching staff doesn't pull it's collective head out of its butt and start defending different qb's differently, we're going to lose some frustrating games that we need to win. If cover 2 is getting torched, then maybe it isn't the answer. If it's holding up, stick with it.

Either we have the personnel to cover man to man or we don't. If we don't, this season is already over, because our offense is not going to bail out the defense.

 

Brady doesnt have stafford arm. While i agree to a point, stafford and rodgers might be the only 2 that can make those throws. Especially outdoors in december

 

I agree with most of this, but as good as Brady is, he can't make some of the throws Stafford did.

We definitely blew some assignments, but Stafford made some unbelievable throws.

 

The offense can't capitalize, another week and another dropped TD pass. This secondary gave up 400 yards of passing, if the Lions had a running game this would have been a disaster. Both teams were lucky for the officiating crew that was on the field as there was blatant PI's on both side, multiple ones at that. Artie Burnt is no better than a 4th round pick, he was a desperation pick up and is not even close to be a starting caliber CB in the NFL, we dodged a bullet.

 

To be fair it was in a dome at home and Matt was dropping dimes.

The no pressure was very concerning, bud looked useless.


Harrison... where are you

 

Stafford has an extremely strong arm . Brady is better with pin point accuracy but does not have the arm strength. He will carve up zone or man so we are screwed either way.

 

Like to see him do that in the rain like most games were played yesterday.

 

It's a foregone conclusion that Brady will shred the D. There's really no way around it. It's up to the offense to score 30+ points.

The Steelers need one of Roethlisberger's 6 TD games vs. Patriots on December 17th like he had vs. Colts and Ravens in back to back weeks in '14.

 

It doesnt matter how many passing yards they gave up, they didnt allow a single TD and in the red zone they played lights out, they only allowed 5 FGs and only allowed 3 points in the entire second half, anytime a defense only allows 15 points in a game against one of the best passers in the league they did their job at a very high level, our defense was awesome last night........

 

They aren't going to beat the Patriots with a pass rush like what they showed last night. Fortunately, that isn't what they've done most of the season.

To be fair, they aren't healthy. Tuitt missed the game.

 

Man, this sucks! We have already lost to the Patriots. Thank goodness I didn't see the game because I get tired of watching the Patriots beat us. Tell me this though...did the offense play like crap and the defense get shredded? I'm guessing they did. Did anyone see the Chargers-Patriots though? I saw a flash on the screen that said Brady is 7-0 against Rivers. Well, I wrote the NFL a letter today and I told them to fix that stat. I said the Steelers are the only team owned by Tom Brady. Get your sh*$ right NFL!

 

I blaming pressure as oppose to lack of coverage. Stafford had all time to throw. He was making them.

A win is a win. This defense is much better than last year, made 3 really huge stands from the 10 yard line and in.

Too bad Shazier dropped that, he had a for sure pick six.

 

The Defense was stout in the Red Zone. Looked like the Steelers Offense trying to score. 20 points got it done last night thanks to the Defense's red zone efforts. But, Stafford shredded the secondary. With little pressure coming his way. Could have been a complete blow out without the effort of the Defense. The concern is can the Offense score 30 or more? They will have to against NE and beyond.

 

It's all about the pass rush, which had been there all season but mysteriously disappeared last night.

 

That's why I don't think this bend don't break strategy will work against NE because Brady would just sneak it from the 1 and probably score. NE wouldn't blow 4 redzone chances and that's pretty much the difference.

I'm just confused because it seemed like the last few weeks we have been running a lot more man? Did we play zone all game because Stafford stays in shotgun, 4-5 wide all game? Because that's what NE is going to do to us.

 

Everybody talking about pressure but that's what happens when you play zone all game. So many chances to get Stafford in 1st half but he got rid of it a second before we got there. When you play man, makes him go thru his reads and gives you that extra 1-2 seconds.

 

Was all that damn holding going on

 

I was proud of how the D stiffened up in the red zone, for sure, but 2 adjustments I would have liked to see would have been; 1) mixing in a bit of man coverage. That hole shot down the sideline was killing us and it didn't look like we made any changes there. Hard to tell on TV. Secondly, I would have liked to see Harrison get some snaps. We weren't generating a lot of pressure and you can't tell me James wouldn't have burnt Mihalik at least a couple of times.

 

yup. The fact that our blitzes were being swallowed and guys were wide open for big chunks. I agree with poster above though, lots of holding not being called, sucked.

 

If anyone thinks Stafford is better than Brady, I have some stuff for sale. Brady would have put up 35 points on us with that Defense. I agree we played stiff against the Lions but a Stafford led offense is no comparison to a Brady led offense. Brady has 5 rings, say what you want about spygate, deflate gate and belichick being a complete pr**k, but the truth is we cant and we wont beat Brady playing cover 2.

 

lions were 6th in red zone td's before entering that game. pats are 19th right now lol. But yes Brady owns us and likely scores 4 out of the 5 td's

 

I'm glad the Steelers beat the Lions. The defense played well and we can enjoy this victory for the next 2 weeks.

With that said, I haven't seen anything yet to convince me the Steelers will even compete with the Patriots. As of right now, Patriots will beat the Steelers by at least 3 scores... 21+ points. The offense is still far too inconsistent to put up 20 points, much less the 30+ needed to compete with Brady and Pats... and the defense is going to get torched by the usual dink and dump. It doesn't matter if they play man or zone. Cover2, Cover3... whatever. It's not going to work unless the OLBs and D-line can get consistent pressure on Brady.

 

your obsession with the pats is just crazy lol. Let's hope we even make it that far, and who knows maybe they get knocked out before then.

We can easily lose to someone besides the pats, or who knows we can end up beating them. I hear you though, they own us. Let's enjoy this win and see what happens. healthy cam/tuitt/grave = there is your inside pressure to beat brady. name a 3-4 D line better than that.

 

Have you watched the Pats this season?

Whether we beat them is a few weeks away yet, but at the moment they look beatable.

Beatable by us? Dunno. But beatable.

 

Some teams match up well against the Patriots. The Steelers are not one of those teams. Teams that can make adjustments on the fly tend to do well against the Patriots. Steelers have a tendency to line up and attempt to impose their will with very little adjustments.