For quite a while, communication issues have been too prevalent on the Pittsburgh Steelers’ defense. They were evident throughout the 2024 season and really plagued the Steelers at the end of the year as they collapsed down the stretch.
Communication problems popped up as the 2025 season began. However, the defense has shown some steady improvement over the last few weeks and had arguably its most complete effort in the Steelers’ 23-9 win over the Browns on Sunday. After the Steelers improved to 4-1, Patrick Queen talked about why the defense’s communication has improved.
“Everybody’s talking,” Queen said, via Post-Gazette Sports on YouTube. “We all just trust each other, we all going out there playing fast. We getting the communication out quick, we understand the formation, we’re going out there and playing football.”
It’s good to hear this from Patrick Queen, as he’s the most essential part of these efforts. He wears the green dot, and thus has to relay the DC Teryl Austin’s calls to the rest of the unit. Even in areas in which he doesn’t directly do anything wrong, any miscommunications involve him at some level for that reason.
While the defense has looked better in general, Sunday was the Steelers’ best effort on that side of the ball considering their earlier struggles. Most of these communication issues have come on deep passes, and the Steelers were beat by the same exact route concept in back-to-back weeks to start the season.
That wasn’t the case Sunday. The Browns do have some deep threats, but Pittsburgh kept everything quiet down the field. The Browns didn’t even look to take any deep shots, with most of the longer passes from Dillon Gabriel only being about 10-15 yards downfield.
Part of the reason for this could simply be that they’ve got more time playing together. There are a lot of new faces on the unit this year, and some first-time starters as well. They clearly weren’t on the same page during the first two weeks but made some marginal improvement in Week 3. In Week 4, the Steelers were excellent defensively until late in the fourth quarter. Now they’ve had five games plus a bye week to get on the same page. There’s also the fact that they’ve gotten key players back from injury in recent weeks.
With the bye week to prepare and get healthy, Patrick Queen’s defense had a great game Sunday. The Steelers allowed just 65 rushing yards to a team that had been running the ball well this year and allowed just 248 in total. Most importantly, it provides plenty of momentum going forward, with the schedule getting a lot tougher in the near future.
