Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. The old saying applies well to the Pittsburgh Steelers’ defense. A unit that’s allowed 32 and 31 points in each of its first two games. Not only are the outputs similar, the way offenses are scoring is too. Defensive lineman Cam Heyward knows it.
“We had to be more aware on the zombie routes,” Heyward said of the defense Sunday after the Steelers’ 31-17 loss to the Seattle Seahawks via the Trib’s Chris Adamski. “They were wide open in the first half on that first drive.”
Heyward’s presumably referring to the Yankee concepts Seattle ran throughout the game, including for the Seahawks’ first touchdown of the game. Two-man crossing patterns with a deep post and shallower cross. Pittsburgh struggled to combat them with cornerbacks out-leveraged and trailing. Just as CB Darius Slay was in Week 1, Jalen Ramsey was in Week 2.
The solution is to ask the deep safety to “cut” the shallow cross and pick up the route while the cornerback drops off into the safety’s deep-middle role. Trading assignments prevents the corner from losing leverage and can bait the quarterback into thinking he has an open receiver. Here’s one example of the technique. Watch the cornerback to the bottom peel off the crosser and carry the downfield post while the safety jumps the underneath route.
Pittsburgh’s defense settled in after a shaky start. What the Steelers couldn’t repeat from last week was closing the game strong, allowing 17 points in the fourth quarter and scores on three of Seattle’s final four drives. Poor run defense and missed chances to make splash plays while giving up long completions, as Jalen Ramsey did late in the game to WR Jaxon Smith-Njigba, were clear problems.
“The second half, I don’t think we just capitalized,” Heyward said, via Adamski. “Whether it was third and long or advantageous situations for our defense.”
No matter if the issues are new or old, they’re problems that must be addressed. But it’s especially frustrating to see Pittsburgh fall into the same traps with a veteran defense that was expected to be one of football’s best.
