There is one final preseason game coming up for the Pittsburgh Steelers on Thursday night. They will be traveling to Atlanta to face the Falcons, a team they played last year and nearly allowed to run down their throats in the second half after controlling the game in the first.
They are excited about the challenge of facing that same team again, and of facing that challenge ahead of their opening-week matchup against the San Francisco 49ers, another team that very much loves to run the football. Defensive coordinator Teryl Austin sees it as a good test for what’s to come.
“Absolutely. Because our goal is to be the best run defense in the NFL, and you can’t do it if your corners and your secondary guys aren’t fitting the run and don’t tackle”, he told reporters yesterday, via the team’s website. “And so yeah, this will be a great test for us. Those guys ran the ball well on us last year in the game we played down there. We were doing okay and then they started really getting some holes there as the game wore on”.
Though the Steelers prevailed, 19-16, the Falcons scored 10 second-half points, and it could have been much worse. Austin wants to see his unit finish the game this time and wants to do it against the best that Atlanta has to offer.
He told reporters that he is “absolutely” hoping to see Falcons first-round running back Bijan Robinson out there on the field to give them that challenge. “That guy, just the few snaps you see, you see why he got picked so high”, he said. “But regardless of who’s on the field, I think it’s more [about] us and how we play and what we do [that] is really the key and the things that I’m looking for”.
Robinson was the eighth-overall pick in the 2023 NFL Draft out of Texas. In three seasons, he rushed for 3,410 yards on 539 carries with 33 rushing touchdowns. He had 1,580 rushing yards in 2022 along with 18 rushing touchdowns, averaging over six yards per rush.
The 49ers have a pretty good running back in Christian McCaffrey, but they also rely on a pool of runners for cumulative contributions. They rushed for over 2,300 yards in 2022 with six different players recording over 200 rushing yards, including Elijah Mitchell, Jordan Mason, Tyrion Davis-Price, and Deebo Samuel, all of whom are still with the team.
The Falcons finished third in rushing last season with 2,718 yards, of which 146 came against the Steelers in their 12th game of the year. Most of that built up in the second half after Pittsburgh largely kept the ground game in check through two quarters with a 16-6 lead.
The Steelers still finished the season with a top-10 rushing defense, holding opponents to a total of 1,838 yards. That might sound like a lot, but these days it’s become fairly reasonable. Only eight teams allowed fewer yards on the ground. Atlanta’s 146 was the third-most rushing yards they allowed on the season, and the Falcons were the only non-divisional opponent to rush for 125 or more yards against them.
