The Pittsburgh Steelers’ defense has been nowhere near as good as it was advertised to be so far in 2025. After seemingly making some improvements during the last couple of weeks, everything unraveled against Cincinnati on Thursday.
Throughout the season, Steelers beat writer Mark Kaboly has pointed at coaching being the reason for the defensive struggles. After their Week 3 win over New England, he claimed the coaching staff would be to blame if things didn’t improve soon after. A couple of weeks later he thought it would be a “colossal failure” if the Steelers lost to the Bengals. Now that they have, Kaboly wonders if coaching is still the issue.
“I mean, there was just no adjustments,” Kaboly said Friday on his Kaboly + Mack podcast. “I think they were afraid to get beaten over the top by these guys. Just a total disaster. When you realize what was happening here, why don’t you play a little more press man [coverage]? Is it talent, is it players? Is it coaching? It can’t be both.”
There really was no bright spot defensively. Against the pass it was brutal. Kaboly mentions the Steelers’ lack of adjustments, and he’s not wrong. The Steelers were beat by slants and other in-breaking routes throughout the day, and they never made any real changes to adjust that.
They did seem worried about being beaten over the top, which could have been the reason for the lack of changes. Yet, they still allowed a handful of deeper passes. Tee Higgins made this play on Jalen Ramsey to set up the game-winning field goal.
Yet, the pass defense wasn’t the only issue. Against the run, it might have been even worse. Kaboly was disgusted with the way the Steelers looked in that regard.
“If you want to be worried about something, worry about that run defense. I’m more worried about the run defense than anything else. ‘Cause it’s just the same old bull-shite, over and over again,” Kaboly said.
The Bengals were historically bad running the ball heading into Thursday. Then, they completely tore the Steelers up. The Bengals picked up 142 yards on the ground during the same game in which they threw the ball 47 times, which is just unacceptable. Chase Brown alone had 9.8 yards per carry, and ran the ball 11 times.
At this point in the year, Kaboly is right to point to coaching. The Steelers have way too much talent on defense to be as bad as they’ve been. They’ve had enough time to settle in with each other and jell, and going into their seventh game they’re still having the same miscommunications as the end of the 2024 season. Mike Tomlin and Teryl Austin have some work to do, and it’s got to happen fast.
