One of the biggest areas the Pittsburgh Steelers looked to improve over the offseason was their secondary. The Steelers brought in Jalen Ramsey, Darius Slay, Juan Thornhill, Brandin Echols and others to try and improve their secondary, but so far, the results have been poor. Through six games, head coach Mike Tomlin admitted that the secondary play “hasn’t met my vision.”
“It certainly hasn’t met my vision to this point, but I’m not discouraged. We got good people there, good players, good people, guys that got good relationships with the game, and so we’re just gonna keep working,” Tomlin said in his press conference Tuesday via the team’s YouTube channel.
The Steelers rank 31st in the NFL in passing yards allowed per game at 258.3, and they’re coming off their worst performance of the season, allowing Joe Flacco to throw for 338 yards as the Bengals put up 33 points in a Thursday Night Football win. Ramsey and Slay, the team’s two most notable additions, struggled all game, and there’s real cause for concern about the Steelers’ pass defense.
Part of the issue on Thursday was that the Steelers failed to generate pressure as Flacco got the ball out quickly, but the secondary didn’t play well. It wasn’t the first time the unit has struggled, as there were plenty of issues stopping opponents from beating them through the air early in the season.
With Slay and Ramsey on the wrong side of 30, there are questions about their ability to keep up, and Slay’s lack of speed was on full display last Thursday, especially on a 37-yard gain where he got beat deep by WR Andrei Iosivas.
Ramsey has largely been a solid addition, but he struggled on Thursday. He also struggled when tasked with covering Jaxon Smith-Njigba in Week 2. The Steelers acquired him with the hopes that he could take away No. 1 receivers, but he’s struggled when those players are among the best at their position.
The good thing about having a lot of veterans in the secondary is that they’ve been through rough patches before, and there’s still plenty of season ahead for the Steelers to turn things around. The outlook might be gloomy right now after an ugly Week 7 performance, but it should be a group that’s motivated to improve and get to the root cause of what’s gone wrong.
The Steelers face a big test in Week 8 against a Green Bay Packers team that has a lot of speed and plenty of weapons at receiver. How they perform on Sunday could be a litmus test for whether this defense has the capacity to be competent against the pass.
