Behind the Steel Curtain
The Pittsburgh Steelers’ defense has been a tumultuous mess through the first two weeks of the season. While the New York Jets had their way in the run game in Week 1, the Seattle Seahawks found consistent success throwing the ball.
In this week’s film room, we look at the biggest problem with the Steelers’ pass defense – the middle of the field is always there for the taking.
Let’s start on the first drive, where Sam Darnold and Jaxson Smith-Njigba had immediate success. Look at this frame from 3rd-and-6. The Steelers are in a single-high safety look, but look how far away Juan Thornhill is from any sort of receiver. Darnold is cocking back to throw at the 32-yard line – Thornhill is 25 yards away at the 44-yard line. On 3rd-and-6. Meanwhile, Smith-Njigba has already broken to the inside and is in front of his man for what turns out to be an easy 15-yard completion.
Same drive, same thing just a few plays later. Single-high coverage on 3rd-and-4. Look how soft the coverage is. If you’re going to give the opponent five free yards to convert, they’ll take those layups all day.
At the beginning of the second quarter, the Seahawks face a 3rd-and-12. Just by the Steelers’ defensive alignment, you can tell Seattle will get a chunk of yards. Pittsburgh comes out in two-man, but there is zero presence in the middle of the field. Horton comes in motion from the near side and runs a crosser over the vacant space and gets a gain of 11.
The Steelers gave away free yards all game and seemingly wondered how the Seahawks spent three hours marching down the field. It’s pretty evident how they did it – they saw the massive hole in the middle of the defense on nearly every play and exploited it until the Steelers made them try something else, only Pittsburgh never made them do that.
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