While it wasn’t without warts, the Pittsburgh Steelers got their first win of the season last night over the Cleveland Browns. And the thanks lay almost exclusively on the defense, which put up 14 points on its own thanks to a pair of defensive touchdowns by Alex Highsmith and T.J. Watt in the 26-22 win.
One defender who did not have a banner day, frankly, was CB Levi Wallace. Outside of a few plays, he really struggled with several key negative moments. It didn’t help that he spent quite a bit of the game matched up against the Browns’ top wide receiver, Amari Cooper—a fact not lost on the veteran defender.
Telling Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reporter Chris Adamski that he’s exhausted, Wallace said that he needed an IV after covering Cooper. “Amari had me running a track meet. You just don’t understand”. Adamski also notes that he sat at his locker room in his uniform for a good 20-plus minutes after the game.
Wallace officially recorded five tackles during the game, but that obviously only tells a fraction of the story. Cooper’s seven catches for 90 yards tells another part of it, but, again, one that is far from complete. We’ll have to wait until the All-22 tape comes out to get a better assessment of his overall performance. And let’s not forget that the wide receiver was questionable to play due to injury.
But suffice it to say that Cooper put him through the paces inside Acrisure Stadium Monday night. Not that it should be a surprise, as Cooper is a top receiver in the game. He had a 1,000-yard season for the Browns just last year with a career-high nine touchdowns, and that was while playing with Jacoby Brissett for most of the year.
He is still looking for his first touchdown of the 2023 season. Wallace is just pleased that it didn’t come against him. Last year in the third game of the season, Cooper caught seven passes against the Steelers for 101 yards and a touchdown, though that one was against Terrell Edmunds in coverage.
These two teams won’t meet again until Nov. 19, so Wallace will have plenty of time to get his fluids into his system to prepare for a rematch. Though perhaps by that time, rookie Joey Porter Jr. will have a bigger role in the defense.
I don’t have an exact snap count at the moment, but Porter didn’t seem to play a lot, yet he had two impact plays with passes defensed. That included a fourth-down play on the Browns’ final offensive play, in coverage on Donovan Peoples-Jones.
