The Pittsburgh Steelers will play the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday and linebacker James Harrison isn’t concerned who starts at quarterback for his team in that game. Why? Well, Harrison firmly believes that the choice of quarterbacks has nothing to do with the defense’s mindset.
“To be honest with you, it really doesn’t change anything that we do on defense,” said Harrison during a Wednesday morning interview on the NFL Network. “On defense we are supposed to go out there and pitch a shutout. I mean, that’s what you are supposed to do on defense, prepare to go out there and stop offenses from scoring. So in the reality of things, if we go out there and do our jobs to perfection, there is no way we can lose a game.”
Harrison is almost exactly right. However, the defense has no control of whether or not the Steelers quarterback throws an interception that results in a touchdown. Semantics? Yes, but it is worth noting that they can indeed lose even if the defense doesn’t give up a single point.
The Steelers currently have the league’s fifth-best scoring defense as they’ve only allowed an average of 18 points a game so far this season. Additionally, they held the Arizona Cardinals, the league’s top-scoring offense, to just 13 points this past Sunday.
The Chiefs offense enters Sunday’s contest with a scoring average per game of 21.2. They have, however, watched quarterback Alex Smith get sacked a whopping 23 times so far this season.
In reality, the Steelers offense shouldn’t need to score too many points on Sunday against the Chiefs in order to win the game. However, I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing the Steelers defense pitch a shutout just the same. The last time we saw one of those was in Week 16 of the 2011 season when the Steelers blanked the St. Louis Rams 27-0. Curiously enough, quarterback Ben Roethlisberger sat that game out.
