The Pittsburgh Steelers likely will not have Alex Highsmith, Nick Herbig, or DeMarvin Leal to rush the passer tomorrow. While they will have T.J. Watt, they won’t have anybody else who threatens any opposing offensive coordinator. That will allow teams to focus all their energy on neutralizing Watt, so how do the Steelers adapt? How creative should they be in generating pressure while lacking quality edge depth?
“I think you could [be creative], but you’ve got to be careful in terms of overdoing it, in terms of just throwing stuff out there to try to get something done,” Steelers defensive coordinator Teryl Austin said on Thursday, via transcript provided by the team’s media department.
T.J. Watt is currently ninth in the NFL with 4.5 sacks, which included the 100th sack of his career. Outside of Watt, the Steelers have 8.5 more sacks, including 2.5 by Nick Herbig — who isn’t playing. Cameron Heyward has two on the season, and he has been close to others. Elandon Roberts, Highsmith, Montravius Adams, Larry Ogunjobi, and Beanie Bishop Jr. all have at least half a sack.
“We still hold to our principles here”, Austin said about how the Steelers prefer to generate pressure. “If you guys know, we’ll pressure, but we also like the four-man rush when we get in some situations and let our guys win. So, I don’t think that’s going to change a whole lot”.
This season, the Steelers are one of five teams blitzing under 20 percent of the time, via Pro Football Reference. But they also rank in the bottom half of the league in total pressures, and 14th in sacks. Without allowing T.J. Watt to maximize his rush ability, it can be tough sledding. But the Steelers don’t have much choice, and have to use those they have at their disposal.
“We’ll count on the guys we bring up to give us some pressure”, Austin said, meaning the Steelers’ practice squad. “We know we have a premier pass rusher on one side, and we have a premier pass rusher inside, so we’ve got to generate some good work from the outside guys that are filling in, and we’ll go from there”.
Minus Herbig, Highsmith, and Leal, the Steelers’ only healthy edge rusher on the 53-man roster outside of T.J. Watt is Jeremiah Moon. He made his Steelers debut last week after spending the first four weeks on IR. The two edge rushers from the practice squad in question are Adetokunbo Ogundeji and Eku Leota. The former has more experience than Moon, the latter roughly the same.
