The Pittsburgh Steelers’ big win over the Cincinnati Bengals Saturday should be remembered for all the right reasons. A complete team effort. An offense making splash plays, a defense taking the ball away, Chris Boswell making another 50-plus yard field goal, the 30th in his career.
The only moment at Acrisure Stadium that gave anyone pause was the Bengals first offensive play of the second half. QB Jake Browning hit WR Tee Higgins over the middle for an 80-yard touchdown, a play similar to George Pickens’ score on Pittsburgh’s first dropback.
Thankfully and crucially, the Steelers answered those points with points of their own, another long Pickens score, and cruised the rest of the way. To quickly examine the Higgins play, let’s see what broke down.
Pittsburgh ran classic Cover 2 on this play. Two-deep shell with the safeties responsible for the deep half. Cornerbacks have the flats and try to funnel the receivers inside while there’s three other underneath defenders responsible for the two hook/curl zones and the middle.
To Higgins’ side, they run a slant/flat concept. Again, just like the Steelers did on Pickens’ opening score. Porter is the flat defender to that side and can take the back, letting Higgins run inside to the next zone window. LB Mykal Walker is supposed to have the hook zone, basically anything short between the hash and the numbers.
But he bites and drifts too hard on the flat instead of passing it off with Porter. By the time he tries to recover and turn back, Higgins has cleared the space behind and Browning puts the ball on him.
With the middle of the field open because of the coverage shell, Higgins has a big runway. To the trips side, Peterson broke and drove on the route concept there, taking him out of the play and a chance to track Higgins down post-catch. Eric Rowe doesn’t take a great angle and lacks the speed to make up for it, Higgins outrunning everyone the rest of the way into the end zone.
Here’s a look at the entire play. Compare Walker versus Myles Jack’s landmark on the opposite hash. That’s where he needed to be.
In short, if Walker had stayed in his zone and kept vision on the quarterback, he would’ve squeezed and made this a much tougher throw. Maybe it’s still complete but it’s not going to be pitch-and-catch.
It’s easy to pick on Walker and I would charge him for the play here. It’s been a tough year trying to sub in for all the team’s injuries and he’s had a couple positive moments in coverage the last handful of weeks. But too often he’s been late to react to offensive concepts and doesn’t have the athleticism to make up for it.
With LB Elandon Roberts suffering a potentially serious pec injury, the team doesn’t have much of a choice at this point. They don’t trust Mark Robinson and while Blake Martinez is around, his athleticism and range is awfully limited. So far, he’s only been used in base packages to stop the run and spent most of his time as a gameday inactive. Myles Jack will see any future reps lost from Roberts but Walker is likely to remain a starter in nickel packages the rest of the way. If he can just eliminate some of the mental mistakes, they can survive the final two regular season games with him.
