The Pittsburgh Steelers couldn’t stop the San Francisco 49ers offense on Sunday, with Christian McCaffrey running all over them to the tune of 152 yards. It was a bad performance, and ILB Kwon Alexander blamed the team’s poor tackling.
“When I watch film, more like tackling,” Alexander said when asked what the run defense issues were. “We should’ve just tackled well, tackled better, I know we can tackle way better. We just have to get back to work. We know what we are now and what we can be, so we just have to get to work,” Alexander said via Chris Adamski on Twitter.
The Steelers better get to work and fix their tackling issues quickly, with two elite running backs in Nick Chubb and Josh Jacobs coming up next. Sunday was far from a banner day for Alexander and the Pittsburgh inside linebacker room. Cole Holcomb, the green dot and true every-down inside linebacker posted a 48.7 PFF grade, with a poor 48.9 run defense grade. It certainly wasn’t his best day, as it looked like he missed some run fits in his gap as well.
Alexander was better with a respectable 61.2 and 64.2 in run defense, and he had eight solo tackles to his name, as well. Elandon Roberts played the lowest number of snaps out of the core inside linebacker trio, but he had the best day against the run, grading out at 72.1 in run defense but just 39.1 in coverage, hence why he’s really only a run-down linebacker.
But across the board, Pittsburgh’s defense had no answer for McCaffrey, which was compounded by the fact that the 49ers were getting pretty much whatever they wanted through the air, too. In almost every facet of the game, the Steelers were outmanned, and the defensive issues can’t continue to happen.
It’s Week One, and Week One can lie about how good or bad a team is, but issues with execution are things that can’t linger and missing tackles are a huge issue. We saw just how bad the Steelers’ run defense got in 2021, and yesterday felt a lot like watching that team try and defend the run.
That was unexpected, because I was honestly fairly confident in the inside linebacker group, especially with the addition of Alexander. So hopefully yesterday was just an anomaly, and they’re able to contain Chubb next week a whole lot better than they did McCaffrey. If not, it could end up being a long season if the Steelers prove they can’t stop the run.
