The Pittsburgh Steelers came into this season thinking they had enough talent to do what they wanted on defense. Unfortunately, what they’ve wanted to do has been far too simple to confuse opposing offenses. At least that’s what former Steeler Bryant McFadden thinks. He believes the Steelers are playing way too much man coverage, especially on third downs.
“Too many man-to-man concepts,” McFadden said Sunday on CBS Sports HQ. “When you play against the Pittsburgh Steelers, especially third down, you line up in single high. You’re basically showing your hand to the opposing quarterback, into what you’re doing. Think about this. When you watch offenses play against Pittsburgh, you see a lot of rub routes, you see a lot of pick routes. Because they know you’re going to be in man concepts, in third downs. So they run man beaters… Until you correct your wrongs, you will get the same game plan.”
The Steelers not changing anything on defense over the years isn’t anything new. But it still rings just as true as it has been. The Steelers play a lot of zone coverage, running cover-three 34 percent of the time, heading into Sunday’s loss. However, McFadden talks about them running man coverage with one deep safety, and that’s the second-most common rate of all coverages at 28 percent coming into Monday.
Man coverage can work, but it’s not working for this defense right now. Darius Slay is starting to stack bad performances, and at the age of 34, that’s certainly not encouraging. But all the blame can’t really be put on one player. The entire secondary has been a problem, and it’s now been back-to-back dreadful performances from the entire defense.
McFadden talks about the ease of pick plays when the offense knows the Steelers are in man coverage. That’s something the Packers took advantage of this week. Take a look at this big catch and run early from Tucker Kraft.
With one deep safety, the Steelers are clearly in man coverage here. Jordan Love knows that, and quickly finds Kraft, who breaks open as the receiver cuts off Jalen Ramsey. Another problem with getting beaten in man-to-man is that there usually isn’t anybody around to clean up your mistakes. That happened here, and it happened quite often throughout Sunday’s loss.
At the end of the day, something has to change. The Steelers being too simple on defense is one of the first things that needs to change. They’re being picked apart week after week now, and it’s starting to get embarrassing for a unit that touted itself to be one of the best in the league before the season began.
