For the second week in a row, the Pittsburgh Steelers defense had a lot of lapses in coverage in their 20-17 loss to the Dallas Cowboys that seemed to stem from miscommunication or poor communication. While the Steelers were on the road in Week 4 against the Indianapolis Colts, they were at Acrisure Stadium on Sunday night, and there’s simply no good excuse for the number of coverage busts Pittsburgh had against Dallas.
However, S Minkah Fitzpatrick doesn’t think it’s a big concern for Pittsburgh’s defense.
“I don’t think it’s too high of a concern. I think it’s easy fixes. I think we just have to overemphasize it during the week, we have to practice with crowd noise the entire week. We gotta make sure everybody knows what they’re doing, we gotta make sure everybody’s on the same page,” Fitzpatrick said via Chris Adamski of TribLive. “It’s a new secondary, we got a lot of new faces, younger faces, and we might not have that chemistry that we had in the past. But it’s definitely something that we can work on.”
If the fixes are easy, then they should’ve been addressed with the number of issues they had last week. Communication was clearly a problem again tonight, and the Steelers had to burn their final timeout ahead of Dallas’ fourth-and-goal play it scored on when Beanie Bishop Jr. was lined up on CeeDee Lamb.
Bishop in particular had a rough outing and seemed to be out of place on a number of occasions. The Steelers played a good bend-don’t-break style of football and forced two turnovers in the red zone and blocked a field goal, but the Cowboys seamlessly moved the ball with 445 yards.
The defense also couldn’t get off the field on third down for the second week in a row. Dallas went 9-of-15 on third downs, and with the Steelers’ defense on the field for 77 plays, they wore down late as Dallas found success on the ground. It was in those obvious passing situations where the Steelers seemed to have the most trouble with their communication and lapses in coverage, and that’s really when those things cannot happen.
It’s something that needs to be fixed, and while Fitzpatrick doesn’t view it as a concern, the Steelers need to take steps toward figuring out why they’ve been out of sorts when it comes to communicating and making sure every guy on the defense is doing his job and is where he’s supposed to be. The fact that it’s been an issue for two weeks now means the communication issues are on their way to becoming a trend, and it’s something the Steelers need to nip in the bud ahead of their Week 6 game against the Las Vegas Raiders.
