It remains to be seen if the injury the Pittsburgh Steelers could have least afforded entering the playoffs was to OLB T.J. Watt. They didn’t have much of a choice, either way, suffering a knee injury during a friendly-fire incident in the season finale.
But the good news is that they are getting other players back healthy or otherwise newly available, particularly at safety. Having each missed the past three games, Minkah Fitzpatrick and Damontae Kazee return to the lineup. The former was out with a knee injury, the latter due to a suspension.
“It feels great to get the gang back together”, DB Patrick Peterson said, via the team’s website. “Getting Mink back out there, the main communicator to the guys in the secondary; getting Kazee back, one of the best post safeties in the game. “I think it’s allowed us to get back to what we wanted our identity to be early on in the year, just trying to confuse quarterbacks as best as we can, having those wildcard players in different positions, and it’s been working out very well for us. We just haven’t had much time to do it collectively as a unit”.
Indeed, the defense as a whole has hardly played at full strength all year. DL Cameon Heyward missed most of the first half of the season and Fitzpatrick missed most of the second half. They lost a couple starting inside linebackers along the way on top of that.
But this is as healthy as they could be under the circumstances, though, as Peterson acknowledged, it remains to be seen precisely how things shake out. Peterson himself started the final three games at safety, alongside veteran Eric Rowe, who has been on the practice squad.
The team has already confirmed that Rowe, who played effectively in his three games, will continue to have a role. But what will it be? Will he be a starter? Will he be the third safety, taking the place of Keanu Neal, who has been on the Reserve/Injured List for most of the second half of the year?
If there is one silver lining to the double blow of losing Fitzpatrick and Kazee (and Trenton Thompson on top of it), it is that it forced their hand to get creative with Peterson. Now they can truly put him anywhere in the secondary before the snap and move him anywhere else after the snap.
That’s part of what he was getting at referring to their identity and confusing quarterbacks. There’s nothing more confusing for a quarterback than being shown one look before the snap and then seeing an entirely different and unpredictable one after it.
Buffalo Bills QB Josh Allen is prone to mistakes, and the Steelers will likely need to induce him into a couple when they play in the opening round of the postseason, assuming the weather conditions make a competent passing game a reasonable option. Putting defensive backs where he doesn’t expect him to be seems a good way of going about it. And now they have the personnel to exercise that creativity.
