The Pittsburgh Steelers defense looked pretty bad on Sunday in the team’s 30-7 loss to the San Francisco 49ers, but at least one guy showed up. OLB T.J. Watt had three sacks and two forced fumbles in the loss, recovering one of the fumbles and another that he probably should have recovered if not for a remarkable butt recovery by 49ers QB Brock Purdy. NFL Media analyst Brian Baldinger broke down Watt’s performance and had quite the comparison for the outside linebacker.
“Wasn’t a whole lot of highlights for the Steelers except for T.J. Watt,” Baldinger said. “This is just Freddy Krueger in football cleats.”
Baldinger noted that Watt could look to reclaim the Defensive Player of the Year award he won in 2021, and with his performance yesterday, his odds certainly improved. He had a field day with OT Colton McKivitz, San Francisco’s new starting right tackle, with five quarterback hits on the day. It was an impressive performance that reminded Baldinger of the “Nightmare on Elm Street” antagonist, but it was as if Freddy Krueger was surrounded by the Beanie Babies yesterday. No one else on Pittsburgh’s defense could match Watt’s performance, and the 49ers were able to do pretty much whatever they wanted offensively.
As disappointing as the performance was, you have to look for the bright side sometimes, and Watt’s performance was certainly a positive. He missed seven games last year with a partially torn pectoral and then was banged up a bit even upon his return. Seeing Watt fully healthy and back to wrecking offensive lines and quarterbacks was a positive. If he can keep that up the rest of the season, the Steelers’ pass rush could get back to the level it has been at prior.
But Watt was the only guy to register a sack yesterday, and he’s not going to be able to do it alone. It just wasn’t a good game from the majority of the Pittsburgh roster. The offense wasn’t good, the majority of the defense wasn’t very good, and the final score reflected that. Normally, it would be a burn the tape sort of performance, but the Steelers need to go to the tape to figure out what the heck went wrong.
Mike Tomlin summed it up postgame, via the team website.
“They largely played to their personality,” he said of the 49ers, “and they did a better job of it than we did ours.”
The 49ers weren’t doing anything the Steelers didn’t expect; they just imposed their will doing everything that Pittsburgh knew they would. Watt was the only guy who could really make an impact, so the Steelers need to go back to the tape and check out what they did wrong, whether it was in scheme or execution as Minkah Fitzpatrick believes, that allowed San Francisco to just dominate. We’ll see if they’ll figure things out ahead of a pivotal Week Two matchup with the Cleveland Browns.
