The Pittsburgh Steelers escaped MetLife Stadium with a 34-32 Week 1 win over the New York Jets, but it was a very un-Steelers-like win. The defense struggled, allowing New York to put up 30+ points and run for 182 yards, a performance that was nowhere near good enough. On The Richard Sherman podcast, CB Darius Slay said that the Steelers know they have a lot to work on defensively.
“Even though the world love to see offense score points, as a defense, no one wants to see two teams score 30 points. You don’t win championships like that. So we have a lot to clean up on the defensive side,” Slay said.
Slay said they knew the Jets would want to run the ball, but they struggled to defend their stretch runs. He credited the coaching staff for coming up with ways to help them stop the run game in weighty moments but said the Steelers need to be better, especially when they gear up for AFC North play.
“We gotta go in and clean a lot of stuff up, because we got some guys in the division who can tote that thing.”
After the game, Slay said defensive captain Cam Heyward said the way the defense played wasn’t up to the Steelers’ standard. Mike Tomlin apparently also came down on the defense despite getting a win.
“Mike T is a defensive-minded head coach, he was on us very hard in meetings [Monday], and everybody just took it to the chin, because we way better than that,” Slay said. “We got a lot of talent on this defense, and we gotta execute better than that.”
After allowing 299 rushing yards in their playoff loss last season, the Steelers weren’t much better at defending the run on Sunday. New York generated 4.7 yards per carry, and the Steelers didn’t do a good enough job of limiting what the Jets did in the design run game. They also allowed Justin Fields to use his legs to extend plays and get on the move. It’s good that Heyward and Tomlin got on the group a bit, because the Steelers aren’t going to win in the postseason with run defense as porous as it was on Sunday.
It was the offense carrying Pittsburgh, which Slay, who’s new to the Steelers, even said was a little unusual, and he knows that the defense needs to play better. Slay was one of the team’s big offseason additions, and while he had a nice pass breakup on a two-point conversion, he got beat for a long touchdown by WR Garrett Wilson, one of the Jets’ explosive passing plays. The run defense was the bigger concern, and all in all, the defense wasn’t good enough.
The defense isn’t a concern quite yet, but another questionable performance on Sunday could make it one. Whatever went down in meetings and was said by Tomlin should be a wake-up call, and we’ll see if the defense responds with a better performance against the Seattle Seahawks.
