If the past 4 weeks of Steeler games have taught us anything it’s that this 2007 Pittsburgh Steeler team is not in the same class as the New England Patriots on a number of fronts. Let’s take a look at a few things over the next few days….for now let’s start with this:
The Steelers are the #1 Defense in the NFL?
I think not. These guys are overrated. They are “good”…not great….and they struggle against aggressive pass-first offenses (as has been the case since 2002)
Week 1: They face Cleveland’s Charlie Frye. By the time he was yanked from the game the Steelers were up 17-0. Frye finished the game with 34 yards passing. He was traded two days later.
Week 2: The Steelers face JP Losman, who is now serving as the backup QB to Rookie Trent Edwards in Buffalo.
Week 3: The Steelers beat up on struggling QB Alex Smith who finished the game 17/35. After some injury issues SanFran is now on their 3rd QB of the season.
Week 4: The Steelers first “real test” of the season….an Arizona team that has a legit QB and some talented weapons at the WR position. The Cards use 4WR and 5WR sets, throw the ball 35 times, and move the ball easily when the game was on the line. Steelers lose. This is the “blueprint” to beat the Steelers that New England created Week 1 of the 2002 season. We’ll get to that later.
Week 5: Scary game. A pass-happy team had just beaten the Steelers and here comes the west coast offense in Seattle. Hasselbeck was off and the Steeler defense played real well. The Seahawks have turned their season around but we dominated them in this game. It helped that their #1 WR was out of the game.
Week 6: Bye
Week 7: The Steelers face the Denver Broncos and the secondary makes Jay Cutler look like John Elway. Cutler goes 22/29 for 250 yards and 3 touchdowns. Ouch, Steelers lose.
Week 8: Carson Palmer and the Bengals go 23/31 passing but for only 205 yards and 1 TD. Steelers win.
Week 9: Steelers demolish an awful Ravens team.
Week 10: Good game from the Steelers here as they shut down a good Browns offense.
Week 11: Weather game….statistics are going to be down, of course. Steelers secondary couldn’t stop Kellen Clemens and the NYJ offense when it counted the most. Bad loss.
Week 12: Another weather game….good defensive statistics need to be taken with a grain of salt.
Week 13: Possibly the worst game of Carson Palmer’s career as he routinely missed wide open Bengal WRs. Many in the media believe that if Palmer played “average” instead of awful, the Bengals win this game.
Week 14: Patriots destroy Steelers and Brady goes 32/46 for 399 yards and 4 TDs.
Conclusion:
So this Steeler defense has benefited from playing Charlie Frye, Kellen Clemens, Kyle Boller, Steve McNair, JP Losman, Alex Smith, and John Beck. That’s 6 games this season against backup/fringe starting NFL QBs.
There are 3 games that you can chalk up the Steelers impressive defensive statistics in part due to bad weather. In sloppy, rainy, muddy, horrible field conditions nobody is going to put up eye-popping offensive statistics.
One could argue that the Steelers have faced 6 good QBs. A loss to Jay Cutler, a loss to Brady, a loss to Warner/Leinart and wins against Hasselbeck and Palmer (twice). That’s 3-3 against “good offensive teams” which tells me that this defense is AVERAGE.
The Steeler defense has 2 INTs in the past 7 games.
The Steeler defense is 8th in the NFL in sacks.
The Steeler defense is 31st in the NFL in INTs with 8. There are 9 teams with at least twice as many INTs.
The Steelers are 28th in passes defended…meaning their DBs don’t get their hands on any passes. The ball is either completed or thrown over a WRs head or into the ground. This along with the INT stat tells you our secondary isn’t “making plays” they’re just “there”.
If you get into an argument with a friend of yours and you want to throw our “number 1 defense in the NFL” stat in their face I’m not sure if that stat holds much weight when you take a deeper look into the season up to this point.
So who do you think has the “real” #1 defense in the league, if it’s not the Steelers?
The Raven’s, when healthy. They were one time out away from doing what we failed to do.
I think the problems with our secondary are due to our poor pass rush and injuries at saftey. I hope Woodley can give us a good replacement for haggans and maybe we can look to upgrade the other olb position after we address the oline.
Great post. The most glaring weakness that our D has had over the years is our front line’s inability to put pressure on the QB. Any time we need to put pressure we have to blitz, and that usually gets picked up.
The one thing that I thought we did wrong against Brady was run slow developing blitzes against him, usually having a MLB run around the outside to try and hurry/sack him. I don’t know why this would be effective considering how quickly Brady can get rid of the ball.
Ravens, Colts, Bucs.
Remember that the Ravens defense is basically on the field ALL GAME (most games) due to their terrible offense. They have some great speed in the secondary and still have some guys that can make plays. Last week vs the Patriots the Ravens also got a bit lucky that the wind kept Brady from throwing DEEP downfield.
Steeltown-
Agreed. Pre-Snap I could basically guarantee you that the “slow developing MLB blitzes” with Farrior and Foote were not going to get there in time.
If Tomlin had his druthers and we had the proper personnel we would play a lot of Cover 2 in that game….and hopefully be generating some pressure from the DL. The Colts will miss Dwight Freeney for this reason if they play the Pats in the AFC Championship game.
This defense can definitely stop the run, but the corners are not good enough against the pass. Ike is good enough to cover the second-best WR on the opposing offense, but gets stuck on the best WR because Townsend lacks some physical skills. Deshea is smart, but he can’t hang with fast or quick WRs.
With no corner (like Rod Woodson) to shut down one reciever, then it become a question mark as to where the safeties roll on coverage.
Add to that an average pass rush: Haggans is bad, Foote is a run stuffer, Farrior and Harrison are decent, and the DL can’t pass rush…sigh…
Hopefully, Otah falls to the Steelers in the draft. That would be a good start to fixing the OL.
We need a playmaking OLB. Harrison is a solid player, but not one opposing teams fear. The way the Steelers play defense they need someone like a Demarcus Ware. A really good ROLB that is constantly dangerous to the other team.
Like I said before if we focus on the olin with 2 of our top 3 picks maybe we could use the remaining one to get another OLB, cause Timmons will play inside, either that or we have to wait till next year.
Granted out best defense is our offense (win TOP = better defensive stats in regards to points and yardage), but when this defense plays the way it should against certain offenses it is one of the best if not the best.
The first half of the Patriots game it seemed like the corners were playing more on the LOS instead of the usual 10-15 yds when Brady was going with the short stuff. I think biting on the play-fake and the double lateral killed the confidence in the corners with the safeties.
We know what we’re getting with Carter, an extra run stuffer, but A. Smith killed the game by biting on those 2 plays and it forced the corners to play the long ball (which didn’t really come later in the game because Brady took what we gave him). This is just a game where we missed both Ryan Clark and Troy Polamalu.
The Pats went 4 WRs in the fist half. In the 2nd half it was all 5WR all the time. We couldn’t stop the 5WR formations. They did us a favor in the 1st half by not using the 5 wide.
I noticed early in the Ravens game when Pats went 5 WR, the Ravens overloaded one side with their DL and maybe a LB and were able to get a clean hit on Brady. I think from the point on, we did not see the the 5 WR set. Did the Steelers ever try this on Sunday?
I’m curious, I watched the game but didn’t notice, was Timmons in the game often or at all in the second half? I know Gay saw gametime and against 5WR but did Timmons or anyone else that is supposed to have coverage skills?
That Welker TD is still biting me hard ’cause the entire 4 seconds the formation was shown I was thinking, Carter isn’t going to move fast enough to cover the quick out, sure enough, there it was. But the bad thing is, Carter didn’t even move until the ball was in the air, what was up with that?
I think we ran out of coverage bodies to throw on the field and that’s why the 5WR sets killed us. I still stand by my statement of this is just a game where we missed both Ryan Clark and Troy Polamalu.
Good stuff…I posted something similar about 2 weeks ago…Not as in depth…Similar premise