Steelers Now
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — The Pittsburgh Steelers won their 2025 season opener against the New York Jets on Sunday, going on the road to earn a 34-32 victory.
You wouldn’t know it to talk to members of the Steelers defense.
“We played like shit,” Steelers linebacker Patrick Queen said succinctly.
Alex Highsmith was less profane, but no less critical:
“That’s not the standard for our defense.”
It’s not the standard, but it has become a concerning trend. The Steelers ended the 2024 season with one of the more embarrassing performances defending the run in franchise history, giving up 299 yards rushing yards in a playoff loss to the rival Baltimore Ravens.
The Steelers spent most of the offseason focused on fixing what ailed them in that Ravens game. They spent three draft picks on front seven players that are primarily run defenders in Derrick Harmon, Jack Sawyer and Yahya Black. They made a huge upgrade in physicality at slot cornerback by adding Jalen Ramey.
And yet, in the 2025 season opener, it was more of the same. The Jets ran all over the Steelers with Justin Fields and Breece Hall. Hall had 19 carries for 107 yards. Fields ran 12 times for 48 yards and two scores. The Jets finished with 182 yards on the ground.
It’s no 299, but that was the team that most people consider to be a Super Bowl favorite in 2025. The Jets are coming off a 5-12 season that caused them to fire their head coach.
If the Steelers can’t stop this New York offense, how could they possibly hope to deal with the top offenses in the NFL?
“If we keep playing like that, we are going to get our face mashed in,” Queen said. “It’s that simple. I call it like it is, and we played like absolute trash.”
The worst part is that the Steelers knew it was coming. While there were some schematic wrinkles they had to deal with, the Steelers knew they’d be facing a heavy dose of some combination of Hall, Braelon Allen and Fields running the ball.
“They had over 100 yards at half time,” outside linebacker T.J. Watt said. “That’s obviously not acceptable. Especially when we knew that was the game plan coming into it.”
“We got punched in the mouth coming out of the gate, and that’s not the standard for us,” Highsmith said. “So, we just got to get in the lab, we got to digest this film, and you know, we got to come out and play more physical from the jump. We got the W, but it obviously wasn’t good enough from our part.”
So what happened? Did the absence of Harmon open up a hole the Steelers couldn’t fill in the heart of the defense? Were Mike Tomlin and Teryl Austin too slow to adjust to wha the Jets were doing schematically? Or are veteran Steelers stars like Watt and Cam Heyward simply washed up?
The end of the game should...
