Before the season began, I wrote an article entitled “Slants Are Back” to the Pittsburgh Steelers offense. Thursday night, they were on full display in Paycor Stadium. Just for the home team.
In a game where Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase caught 16 passes, a record for his franchise and against the Steelers, slants were the featured route concept. Pittsburgh had no answer for it.
Before expanding on what went wrong, here’s a look at simply what happened. Below is a montage of every completed slant pass against Pittsburgh. In total, seven of Joe Flacco’s 31 completions – that’s 22.6 percent.
A couple of those are a little debatable, the Noah Fant touchdown and final Chase catch, but the Fant score was an obvious rub route with Fant adjusting his route over the top and the Chase grab was him changing angle and gearing down to avoid running into Patrick Queen. And it doesn’t count the multiple ones dropped in this game, either, or penalties against Pittsburgh.
Point is these plays occurred far too often. And against every corner. Man, zone, different people, the results were the same. Pittsburgh’s corners consistently played with outside leverage, opening the door to getting beat inside. Or in zone, Flacco threw into windows with accuracy and allowed for run-after chances.
We haven’t gotten to the All-22 and, frankly, it’s 3:05 AM and I am Gremlin-after-midnight-angry after watching this mess of a game. There were a lot of issues defensively, that is obvious to anyone who even casually watched the game, and a deeper dive is required. It was disappointing after offseason plans built around bringing in cornerbacks and having a secondary specifically to combat this Bengals wide receiver corps to see the Steelers’ worst performance ever against them.
Sure, a short week limited prep time, but it was no secret who Cincinnati had or what the Bengals wanted to do. Pittsburgh had a poor plan and even worse execution. Combine those two things and it’s no shock old man Flacco carved them up in literally one of the best games of his career.
