The Pittsburgh Steelers’ defense just put together one of its worst performances against the run in a very long time. The 249 yards the Buffalo Bills ran for were the most of any visiting team at Acrisure Stadium, led by a whopping 32 carries from James Cook. Against the Baltimore Ravens this week, the Steelers will obviously need to be better.
But interestingly, former Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger hopes the Steelers base their entire defensive game plan around stopping the run.
“Lamar [Jackson], beat us with your arm. We’re gonna put nine guys in the box. We are going to make sure that you do not run for 100 yards,” Roethlisberger said Tuesday on his Footbahlin podcast. “Go into this saying, no, Lamar has to beat us with his arm. It has to, like that is our mindset. We are shutting down the run. And I don’t know if that’s what they’re gonna do. But in my opinion, that’s what I would do. I would say, we gotta try and do whatever we can to make this team as one-dimensional as possible, and make that one dimension beat us.”
Even if the Steelers did allow 100 rushing yards, that would still be a 149-yard improvement from last week. But more seriously, it’s something they must do. It’s been a while since these two teams last played; it was in the Wild Card round last January. Yet, that was another awful performance from the Steelers’ defense.
That game was even worse than the Steelers’ showing against the Bills. The Steelers would have allowed 300 rushing yards back then if not for a Baltimore kneel-down late in the game. The Ravens were the better team from the outset, and the Steelers seemed to give up, similarly to Sunday’s effort against Buffalo.
The Steelers have been better at stopping the run at times this year. But about 10 and a half months after that disastrous effort against Baltimore, the Steelers are clearly still capable of being gashed on the ground. It won’t be an easy effort against Derrick Henry and Lamar Jackson either.
This Ravens team is much weaker than last year’s, but Henry is still producing at the age of 31. He’s averaging 77.6 rushing yards per game, and his 931 total rushing yards are the seventh-highest in the league. He’s not tearing the league apart anymore. But he’s certainly capable of tearing apart a lackluster run defense like the Steelers.
Making Jackson beat you with his arm isn’t the worst idea. He’s a very talented passer, but missed a lot of time with injury and hasn’t looked comfortable since coming back. He was just 17 for 32 with an interception against a porous Cincinnati defense last week. Yet, stopping the run has been something the Steelers have done inconsistently this year. We’ll see if it’s too optimistic for Big Ben to think the Steelers can do it this Sunday in Baltimore.