The Pittsburgh Steelers revamped their inside linebacker room this offseason, adding Cole Holcomb, Elandon Roberts and Kwon Alexander while cutting Myles Jack and letting Devin Bush and Robert Spillane walk. Longtime inside linebackers coach Jerry Olsavsky also left the team, with Aaron Curry being hired as his replacement.
While the group is different and should be better, one concern remains, and that’s how this group of linebackers will look in coverage. But don’t count Curry among the concerned parties, as he thinks the group will be “outstanding” in that part of the game.
“I think they’ll be outstanding. I’m looking forward to it,” Curry said via the 93.7 The Fan Steelers Podcast. “They work really hard at it. We talk about it all the time. We’re very detailed in our approach, to our assignments. So I’m looking forward to watching these guys perform.”
The signing of Alexander mitigated a lot of the concerns about the coverage in the room, as he immediately became the team’s best option to cover. It’s incredibly hard to ask inside linebackers to cover, but as far as doing so, Alexander is at least adequate at it. For more on Alexander’s performance, check out Jonathan Heitritter’s film room.
It’s a role that’s not a strength of Holcomb and especially Roberts, but having Alexander in the fold gives the Steelers more flexibility. Pittsburgh can also look into running three-safety packages and allowing the additional safety on the field to cover the tight end/running back that would normally be assigned to the linebacker.
There are a lot of ways that the Steelers can deal with coverage, but if Curry is right and the linebackers will be able to handle it, that’s obviously going to be a huge plus for Pittsburgh. But from the first preseason game, we didn’t see enough of Roberts to get a true gauge, while Cole Holcomb struggled to the tune of a 38.9 coverage grade via PFF in 11 coverage snaps. Alexander was much better, with a 58.6 grade, which still isn’t great but is respectable for a linebacker.
The sample size wasn’t enough to make any real determination from, but history tells us this could definitely stand to improve from a coverage perspective. Alexander should be solid though, and if nothing else, the unit should be better in coverage than last year’s crop of inside linebackers was.
