DK’s Daily Shot of Steelers: Defense a real dilemma

DK’s Daily Shot of Steelers: Defense a real dilemma

[Music] I wanted the offense to put up 30 points for the first time. Didn’t think it was asking much. Turns out it wasn’t asking much. Actually, outdid that by one full point. I wanted the defense to just, I don’t know, be its best self. But it turns out nobody can really know right now what exactly that is. Good morning to you. Good Friday morning. I’m Dan Kvachovich of DK Pittsburgh Sports coming to you from Cincinnati. This is Daily Shot of Steelers presented by FanDuel. It comes your way bright and early every weekday. If you’re into hockey and or baseball, I also offer daily shots of Penguins and Pirates in the same place that you found this Bengals 33, Steelers 31. That’s Bengals without Joe Burrow. Bengals with the lowest ranked rushing offense in the league. Bengals without really a passable offensive line. Bengals without Mike Gasiki, their starting tight end. Bengals still putting up 33 points and 470 yards of offense. and Joe Flacco alone accounting for 342 of those yards through the air. The great, and I do mean great, Jamar Chase with 16 catches for 161 yards. T. Higgins as ever by his side, six catches of his own for 96 yards. Chase Brown, one of the NFL’s lowest rated, lowest performing running backs with a 2.5 average entering this evening. Ran for 108 yards on just 11 carries. My friends, it isn’t the what. It isn’t the losing to the Bengals or the losing on Thursday night silliness. It’s not even just the loss period. It’s it’s the how. And when I say how, I mean how did this happen? How did this defense that had taken very real, very measurable strides over the previous three weeks regress just like that in a single night? How did TJ Watt, Cam Hayward, the stars of this defense, virtually vanish? How did the entire inside linebacking crew, which we’d all been singing about from Dublin to the Browns game, just go poof? How did this secondary that was purportedly designed to take on a team like the Bengals with not one but two spectacular wide receiving threats pose absolutely no threat to anything that Cincinnati wanted to do? And by God, how did Chase Brown run for all those yards, but only against this one opponent? How? How? Mike Tomlin typically wanted to talk about the two turnovers the offense had. I’m not touching that with a 31 ft pole. Sorry. Your offense was the only reason you were even remotely in that game. your defense, your beloved defense, your defense, as well as whatever it is that Terra Austin has to do with it, vomited up the entirety of the reasons that the Steelers lost. So, I went to the players. I went to the locker room. I asked Joey Porter if maybe this secondary, you know, the coverage people thing where there’d be three of them himself, Darius Slay, of course, Jaylen Ramsay would be able to take on, you know, the mono immano challenge of both Chase and Higgins. And I asked if maybe this was too much challenge for you guys when you’re facing, you know, two guys of that caliber as opposed to just one, which you’ve been faced most of the year. No, not really. I mean, we got the guys to do it. They just got to let us play. What do you mean by that? The I mean, I I wasn’t a big fan of the call today with the with the officiating, but it is what it is. It’s football. Now, be fair here. There’s only so much Joey can say in response to that question. He’s not going to say, “Yeah, you know what? Uh, it is too much. We’re just not that good.” That’s not how defensive backs are wired to begin with. I’ll also acknowledge to some degree something else that he would bring up with me and that’s that the penalty flags against him were really tickytacky and they were and that doesn’t help but nonetheless this was terrible. I asked Alex Heismith, probably the Steelers most stout runs stopper, why there were no runs stoppers in this one and what it’ll take to have runto stoppers again. What will it take to stop the run? I mean you guys got to that point recently in Ireland last week. Yeah. I mean specifically I mean like you said this just looked like more physical get blocks and so um you know that’s where it starts. You just got to play physical get blocks. No one had answers. Nobody. Patrick Queen for once didn’t have answers. didn’t really have anything to say, including expressing his standard frustration or disgust or anything. Just said, “We need to be better.” Well, they do. And listen, I know how the nation rolls. At least I’d like to think I do after a lifetime around it. And this is all going to end up being about Tomlin, maybe to a lesser extent, Austin. And on top of that, the the weirdness about Thursday nights, I’m not into days of the week patterns. I’m not even into the more tangible short week patterns. To me, bringing that up in any context comes across as excusem for Tomlin or Austin or whoever. Zack Taylor and his staff had the same amount of time, the exact same amount of time to prepare for the Steelers as vice versa. They had the time to come up with that unreal flacko bootleg that had people throughout that stadium audibly gasping when it occurred. They had time to make a real plan. They had time to say, “Hey, what happens in the event that our three coverage people can’t handle their two other worldly wide receivers? What happens then?” They had time to hear that question, to pose it themselves, and to address it. They might not have found the right solution, but don’t tell me they didn’t have time. They had time not to stick in the cover two, cover three formations. They had time to wonder why they wouldn’t ever send more than four people after the Cincinnati backfield, meaning four up front. They had time. And you know what else? They had halfime, too. They didn’t do anything. They didn’t change a thing. And honestly, I don’t really care which one is the horse and which one’s the cart. I know that this defense doesn’t work. I know that impressing us in two out of six games isn’t good enough. I know that sometimes it’s miscommunication. Sometimes it’s somebody not understanding roles. Sometimes it’s just a lack of physical actual performance on the field. And there was plenty of that last night. Be sure of that. I’m talking about just routine missed tackles, stuff that you don’t need to be coached how to do. And I also know that I’m sorry, I’m not really thinking much about taking this football team too seriously until this stuff gets cleaned up. And it’s not going to get cleaned up until everybody involved understands the scope of the slop within which they’re currently operating. When we come back, J1Q [Music] Luxembourg Garbet Kelly and George is a personal injury law firm in Western Pennsylvania that represents injured people in automobile accidents, workers compensation cases, and medical malpractice claims. The attorneys at Luxembourg Garbid Kelly and George pride themselves in doing what they say they’re going to do. It’s important to them that when they make you a promise, they keep that promise. And this law firm has been keeping promises for over 80 years. Luxembourg Garbet Kelly and George has been AV rated. That’s the highest rating a law firm can receive for legal ability and ethics. And the lawyers at the firm have been designated super lawyers. That’s a real thing for over 15 years. Rare combination there. Luxembourg, Garbet, Kelly, and George has offices in Cranberry, Newcastle, Beaver Falls, Butler, and Elwood City. Learn more about them at lgk.com or by calling 888842-5454. Again, that’s 8888425454. Football season’s finally here. Time to check out the latest odds, futures, and win totals on the FanDuel sports book. Think the Steelers are headed to the Super Bowl? Lock in your bets today. Whatever your game, FanDuel Sportsbook delivers the latest lines, futures, and specials so you can join in on all the action. [Music] Today’s J1 Q comes from Nate who says, “DK, the Steelers did score more than 30 points.” So, you were right about that, but as if on Q, the run defense regressed to the mean. Will there be a serious debate inside the organization about the merits of stripping the ball versus ending the play? because that’s a lot of what I’m seeing on these missed tackles. Nate, I have seen the game exactly once with my own eyes live from the press box. Occasionally, I’ll glance over and look at the silent monitor that the Bengals provide, as all teams provide in their press boxes, but beyond that, I’m not going to have a great gauge for what percentage of the missed tackles were the result of a player trying to pry the ball loose. The Steelers defense hasn’t had a takeaway since Ireland. Not since that TJ Watt interception. That’s a long time for a defense that’s supposed to be founded on takeaways to go without one. And unlike the Cleveland game where they came close a half a dozen times, they weren’t even in the solar system of a takeaway in this game. They were just bad, bad, bad. So, the point I’m going to reiterate here because I feel it’s worth reiterating, everyone, maybe even yourself here with the way you’ve asked this question, Nate, is going to want to point to a single thing. Makes it easier to, you know, transfer the anger or whatever, focus the anger. That’s not going to do anything. If everyone wants to complain about Tomlin’s record on a certain day of the week, it’s not going to do a thing toward getting this defense where its players think it should be. Where a lot of people of late would say they think it should be. Is there some single one fell swoop solution to all of this? Maybe if you fire Terrell Austin and you tell Mike Tomlin, meaning you fire from above and tell Tomlin to leave his coordinator alone, you can install some. This isn’t going to happen. I could waste everybody’s time with it. It’s not going to happen. That is something that would cover a lot of different areas with one move if you or actually Art Rooney felt that was the way to go. But none of this is going to get even recognized properly unless you look at everything and you’re honest with yourself about everything. Are these schemes, the cover two, the cover three, the fourman rush, are they the right fit for this personnel? Are they the right fit for the National Football League in 2025? Are they the right fit for a given opponent? One of the things that I not liked, I loved about the games against the Vikings and the Browns was that the Steelers made very obvious but smart adjustments to those opponents. Did they fail to do that against the Bengals because of the short week? I have a hard time accepting that. Did they fail to do it because they got a little bit too full of themselves after a couple wins? Meaning the coaches? That’s possible. But you’d have to do something along the lines of what Tomlin and others on his staff did before flying over to Ireland. You’d have to take a really long hard look in the mirror. And you’d have to do it in ways that might wound the ego some. But man, you’re sure as heck not going to look in the mirror and say, “Why can’t I win on Thursdays?” I appreciate the question. I appreciate everybody listening to Daily Shot of Steelers. I would bring up the app thing, but you’re all in a terrible mood. You’re not going to download our app today. So, whatever you do, don’t email me at dkdsittsburghports.com because I know you won’t want the premium level of the app and let’s just all keep it, you know, above board. Reminder that there’s no double shot of Steeler show today because be traveling back from Cincinnati at that time. So the next anything that we do will be Monday’s Monday morning’s daily shot of Steelers. Thanks so much for listening. [Music]

This defense has become an all-consuming dilemma.

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