Pittsburgh Steelers DL Cameron Heyward welcomes the Los Angeles Chargers as visitors this weekend, playing their brand of football. It’s a Steelers style of football, prioritizing great defense and a stout running game. The Chargers may have Justin Herbert at quarterback, but they were running the ball down your throat this year.
“It’s fun. It’s old-school football”, Heyward said of Sunday’s Steelers-Chargers game via the team’s website. “If you’re worried about having your dime package ready this week, you picked the wrong week. We’re gonna have some big bodies on the field, and it should be fun to get after it”.
So far this season, the Steelers have spent ever so slightly more than half their time in sub-packages. That includes 16 snaps in dime, a more than 13 percent usage rate. Notably, nearly all those dime snaps—all but one-came this past Sunday against the Denver Broncos. They only played one snap of dime in the opener against the Atlanta Falcons on the first third down of the game.
When the Steelers used their dime defense, Cory Trice Jr. became the sixth defender. In case you’re wondering, that only includes four snaps missed by Donte Jackson in their last game. The Steelers actually use Damontae Kazee rather than DeShon Elliott at safety when they play dime. Don’t ask me why. They just do. Maybe to justify the $3 million they’re paying him.
Defenses use a dime defense—six defensive backs on the field—when facing obvious passing situations. That is, long-odds down-and-distance situations and when an offense is trailing on the scoreboard. The Steelers and Chargers have the lowest-scoring defenses in the league this year, though.
And not only do the Steelers and Chargers rank at the top in scoring defense, they are two of six teams with at least 70 rushing attempts on the season. The Steelers have the most in the NFL at 77. They also both like their extra tight ends, running with two 45 percent of the time. in fact, they use 22 personnel more than anybody else in the league thus far this season.
The Steelers have done well to stop the run the past two weeks, but they know the Chargers will be a problem. For obvious reasons, they employ a run-game system reminiscent of recent Baltimore Ravens teams. Jim Harbaugh has imported his younger brother’s offensive coordinator and two of his former top running backs. The trio of Greg Roman, J.K. Dobbins, and Gus Edwards is off to a very good start this year.
While the Chargers still use 11 personnel 53 percent of the time, they rank in the bottom 10 in the league by percentage. The Steelers rank even lower than that, so, as Heyward said, we will see some big bodies in this game. One wonders if the Steelers will use Broderick Jones as a tackle-eligible this week. The Chargers use DL Scott Matlock in a dual role, playing fullback and tight end on offense.
