The Pittsburgh Steelers beat the New York Jets to open the season on Sunday. However, no one expected the manner in which they did so. QB Aaron Rodgers threw for four touchdowns, but the run defense gave up 182 rushing yards and three rushing touchdowns. Plenty of people were culpable, including defensive linemen Cam Heyward and Keeanu Benton. DL Isaiahh Loudermilk says that everyone on the line needs to get off blocks better to prevent more performances like the one at MetLife Stadium.
Most people have been giving Heyward grief for his performance, largely because of the contract saga that preceded it.
“The more concerning thing for me is Keeanu Benton’s play,” Steelers insider Ray Fittipaldo said Tuesday on The North Shore Drive Podcast. “I’m starting to wonder, this is going back to last season. They couldn’t stop the run late last season in that five-game losing streak. It wasn’t any better now. At what point do we see Yahya Black maybe get some play at nose tackle? Keeanu Benton, they’re not going to bench him, but I think you have to find a way to better utilize his talents. He just doesn’t hold up well against double teams. He’s not a big guy. Yahya Black is twice as big, he commands double teams. If you’re looking for a solution to the run game, to me, the easy thing would just be to take a look at that.”
Former Steelers DL Chris Hoke is concerned as well. He thinks that Benton needs to play with better technique and keep better gap integrity. That sounds like Hoke thinks it’s a correctible issue while Fittipaldo thinks Benton might be miscast at nose tackle. But if you watch the clip in that article, Benton simply could not handle the double team. Could Benton have done better with better technique? Maybe, but perhaps a more mammoth human being would hold up better.
That’s where Yahya Black comes in. The rookie fifth-round pick is a massive human being, both in height and size. The Steelers list Black at 6-5 and 336 pounds. That sounds like the perfect physical solution in the middle of the defensive line. And Yahya Black isn’t just a run stuffer. He can cause legitimate problems, like he did in the preseason. The Steelers used him in a slanted nose tackle position against the Carolina Panthers like Mean Joe Greene back in the day.
And boy did it work. Black wreaked havoc, accounting for two sacks and two tackles for a loss in only 19 snaps. He anchored well against the run and penetrated against the pass. Could the Steelers look at that and say, yeah, that’s what we need against the run? Absolutely.
Even defensive coordinator Teryl Austin sees a promising future for Yahya Black against the run. But will the Steelers try to make that future happen now? Or will they hope that Keeanu Benton can get better against the run? They’ll have an interesting test in Week 2 against the Seattle Seahawks. The Seahawks struggled to run the ball against the San Francisco 49ers in Week 1 with only 84 yards on the ground. However, the Seahawks ran for 1,627 yards at 4.2 yards per carry and had 17 rushing touchdowns in 2024. It will be very interesting to see which unit gets back on track Sunday at Acrisure Stadium, the Seahawks’ rushing attack or the Steelers’ run defense.
