Behind the Steel Curtain
Teryl Austin actually drew up something... creative?
Welcome back to BTSC’s “One random Steelers play” series. (Here’s the first edition if you’d like a reminder of how this works).
The TL:DR? In this dead part of the summer, we’re using a random number generator to find a singular play from the Steelers’ 2024, then using it as an excuse to talk about last season and some general football insights.
This week, the random number generator chose the 129th play of the Steelers’ Week 11 win over the Baltimore Ravens. The play was a third quarter second-and-six where the Pittsburgh defense steamrolled a Derrick Henry outside zone run for no gain. Pretty cool, right?
However, last week’s play was very similar — essentially, it came down to defenders winning their individual matchups — and we’ve already gone over Henry zone runs in a past edition.
So, feel free to watch that play on your own time, but I decided to move forward two plays (not one as the next was a false start), and voila — finally something interesting.
The context: Baltimore has the ball on their own 13-yard-line. It’s third and 11. The Steelers are up 15-10 with 15 minutes left in the fourth quarter.
Here’s the play:
Pausing pre-snap, we can see that the Steelers are in their dime package, which means six defensive backs (one more than nickel): two safeties, two outside cornerbacks, and two slot cornerbacks. Given the down and distance, the Steelers are expecting a pass here and choose their personnel accordingly.
Pittsburgh also lines up in an overload front on the right side of the Ravens’ line, with three-quarters of the defensive line on one side of the center. To fill the gaping hole on the other side, Patrick Queen, the one inside linebacker on the field, threatens to blitz over the left guard.
The initial coverage shell is pretty ambiguous here, too. Strong safety Damontae Kazee is playing the deepest and Minkah Fitzpatrick is out of his usual centerfielder role. Could this be a rotated cover 3, or some sort of cover 2 or 4?
Then, the Ravens snap the ball, and the Steelers secondary quickly realigns. Queen sprints backwards into the middle hole while Fitzpatrick moves forward to the hook/curl zone on his side of the field. Now, the cover 2 shell is Kazee and boundary cornerback Joey Porter Jr., presenting the Ravens with an inverted cover 2 look.
You can see the coverage defenders without deep responsibilities form a five-man wall of sorts right at the sticks. They’re fine with anything underneath — just don’t allow a first down.
I added arrows in the screenshot above to show where the Ravens receivers are running. The route concept itself (intermediate out-breakers for the boundary receivers, crossers for the rest) is actually a halfway-decent cover 2 beater. In theory, there’s a hole shot (between the shallow and deep zones) available for both Zay Flowers on the top of the screen and Rashod Bateman on...
