If the Pittsburgh Steelers are going to be good this season, it’s going to be in large part due to their play on the defensive side of the football. Pittsburgh’s gameplan this season is to win with a suffocating defense and a timely offense that grinds teams down. Unfortunately, Pro Football Network’s Arif Hasan does not think the Steelers have a shut down defense, ranking them 16th best in the NFL.
“The Steelers moved up a little in their defensive ranking from last year, in big part because of their draft investments,” wrote Hasan. “Pittsburgh should get more from their pass rush this year, so long as the injury bug doesn’t bite them again. However, they’ll have to hope that the step down from Cam Sutton to Patrick Peterson isn’t too drastic.”
Last season, Pittsburgh’s defense was very volatile as it had the potential to have games where they could hold their opponents to just ten points and others where it looked like a team could score 50 on them. A big reason for this volatility is some games they had superstar EDGE rusher T.J. Watt and others they did not. With a healthy Watt this Steelers defense is much better than 16th-best, but he has to stay healthy.
The Steelers have surrounded Watt with other superstars and good players such as safety Minkah Fitzpatrick, defensive lineman Cameron Heyward, and EDGE rusher Alex Highsmith. The top-end talent on the Steelers defense is very high, there are just question marks everywhere else. As Hasan said, Patrick Peterson has to play at least close to the level that Cameron Sutton performed last year at cornerback. The past few years the Steelers have struggled in the pass defense department due to cornerback play and now they lost their best cornerback last season, how will this impact them?
The Steelers addressed this by adding a very high-ceiling cornerback via the draft in Joey Porter Jr. and signed Peterson to be a veteran presence in the defensive backfield. Porter probably won’t see a ton of playing time right away, but if he proves himself down the stretch he could have a big impact. Either way though I think a fully healthy defensive front may be able to mask some of the deficiencies in the cornerback room as with Watt, Highsmith, and Heyward coming after quarterbacks every play the time to throw for opponents should be pretty low.
The inside linebacker room is another question mark as the entire room has been overturned with Mark Robinson the only exception. How will a starting duo of Cole Holcomb and Elandon Roberts do? It shouldn’t be awful, but I am not sure I would consider it a strength either.
Despite a few question marks on defense, Hasan’s ranking of 16th is a bit harsh on Pittsburgh. When the defense was fully healthy last season they allowed only 16.9 points per game. While that is a smaller sample size than the whole season, I do think the defense can be a top-10 defense this year. The Steelers force turnovers and have high-end talent. The floor for this defense is pretty high if they are healthy and the ceiling is high as well. The Steelers are relying on their defense to get them to the playoffs this season, so they have to be better than merely average.
