Of course, football is all about the team who scores the most points. But what matters more is how teams put those points on the board. The best – and quickest – way to do that is through big plays. As Mike Tomlin has said for years, chunk plays erase a lot of gameplanning. There’s no need to go on a perfect ten-play drive where a penalty, a dropped pass, a nice defensive play can stall out a drive, something that’s happened to Pittsburgh’s offense far too many times.
So the name of the game are splash plays. For Steelers’ Defensive Backs Coach Grady Brown, Pittsburgh’s defense allowed too many of them through the air.
“We allowed too many balls to get over our heads last season,” Brown said during the team’s minicamp via Steelers.com’s Dale Lolley. “We’ve got to clean that up.”
Spoken like a true DBs coach. But the numbers have plenty of truth to them. Per Stathead, Pittsburgh gave up 55 completions of 20+ yards last season, fifth-most in football. . The Steelers had more issues in the first part of the year, facing more potent offenses and dealing with more injuries to the secondary, but figured things out as they caught fire down the stretch.
Still, the overall data is discouraging and Brown is setting his sights bigger. It’s partly what has made him an effective coach and someone who likely isn’t long for Pittsburgh; he figures to receive a defensive coordinator job somewhere around the league soon enough, possibly in 2024.
Pittsburgh will enter the season with a new-look secondary. Patrick Peterson replaces Cam Sutton, Keanu Neal replaces Terrell Edmunds, and there’s two shiny rookies in Joey Porter Jr. and Cory Trice Jr. Porter, at the least, figures to have a Week One role. That could create early-season growing pains and potential coverage busts but Pittsburgh will have to do their best to limit big plays.
Week One opponent the San Francisco 49ers might not be thought of as a big-play passing game but they finished last season with the seventh-most such plays, 56 completions of 20+ yards. Their talented group of wide receivers and TE George Kittle make them a threat vertically or after the catch. Out of the gate, they’ll serve as a good litmus test for the Steelers’ coverage ability.
