Early in the fourth quarter of the Monday Night Football matchup against the New York Giants, the Pittsburgh Steelers did something they typically don’t do on the defensive side of the football: have outside linebackers T.J. Watt and Alex Highsmith switch sides.
Watt and Highsmith switched for four snaps total, with Watt lining up against Giants left tackle Chris Hubbard while Highsmith found himself lining up against Giants right tackle Jermaine Eluemunor.
On one of those snaps, Watt generated a pressure and forced New York quarterback Daniel Jones to step up in the pocket. He ran right into Highsmith, giving the edge rushers sacks on back-to-back plays as they worked together to force Jones off his spot.
Switching sides is something the Steelers have generally been against, but with teams putting a major emphasis on chipping and doubling Watt as much as possible, the Steelers became more open to switching sides at times against the Giants. It led to great success, and now might be useable moving forward.
“We are always looking for ways to try to free T.J. up and try to throw off the blocking scheme of the other people. And so, that was worked out in the d-line room and those guys had a good plan in terms of when to move them, how we were gonna move them,” Steelers DC Teryl Austin told reporters Wednesday of the decision to move Highsmith and Watt around, according to audio provided by the team. “And I think that was part of the thing that happened at that, as we got in the latter part of the game, he had been moving enough, and so it caused them just enough confusion where they left them one-on-on. And you know, when T.J. has an opportunity one-on-one, we like our odds in those things.
“And so we’ll see how it works moving forward, if we’re gonna continue in that vein. But I think the biggest thing is it’s on tape and people know that he’s not a stagnant target.”
Though the Steelers have stated time and time again that they’ve been trying to figure out ways to free up Watt from the chips and double teams, they hadn’t really shown that on film throughout the season, even with Watt seeing the league’s highest number of chips so far this season.
Monday night against the Giants was the first time the Steelers have showcased something to try and change things up for Watt this season. Switching sides was drastic, but it’s a position Watt played as a rookie, so there is some familiarity there, while Highsmith rushed from the opposite side as a rotational rookie in 2020.
Doing it against the Giants was a curveball New York likely wasn’t expecting, and it led to results right away.
As Austin said, now it’s on tape. Teams will have to prepare for it moving forward. How much or how often the Steelers decide to utilize it remains to be seen, but it’s now in their toolbox, so to speak.
