{"id":379495,"date":"2025-09-19T05:20:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T05:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/379495\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T05:20:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T05:20:12","slug":"how-did-steelers-defense-get-beat-by-the-same-play-twice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/379495\/","title":{"rendered":"How Did Steelers Defense Get Beat By the Same Play Twice?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Steelers News<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"PittsburghPittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Teryl Austin during a game against the New York Jets on Sept. 7, 2025. — Ed Thompson \/ Steelers Now\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

PITTSBURGH \u2014 Through two weeks, the Pittsburgh Steelers have given up three passing touchdowns. Two of them came on the same play.<\/p>\n

Not the same actual snap \u2014 that\u2019d be impossible to do. But on the same (or at least similar) schematic play from two different offenses. <\/p>\n

In Week 1, the New York Jets<\/a> ran a play out of 12 personnel with condensed splits, and sent outside receivers Garrett Wilson and Josh Reynolds on paired post routes, with one crossing in front of the other right in front of deep safety Jalen Ramsey.<\/p>\n

The following week, it was more of the same, as the Seattle Seahawks<\/a> ran the same concept, again out of 12 personnel, this time making it a play action and keeping the back and both tight ends in to max protect Sam Darnold.<\/p>\n

Both times, the Steelers\u2019 center-field safety (Ramsey in Week 1, Juan Thornhill in Week 2), went with the receiver crossing from the right to the left of the offensive formation, giving the other crosser a 1-on-1 downfield opportunity while the trailing cornerback had to fight through traffic to stay in phase.<\/p>\n

Neither cornerback (Darius Slay in Week 1, Ramsey in Week 2) was able to do that, allowing a pair of long touchdown passes.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s frustrating enough for any defense, but it was even more so, because the Steelers specifically developed a plan to combat the way the Jets attacked them in Week 1, but they didn\u2019t properly execute it in Week 2.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought we had it fixed,\u201d Thornhill said. \u201cMe communicating with one guy, I guess he didn\u2019t see the communication. It was frustrating.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the quarterback expecting to be able to read the safety and throw the opposite direction of his momentum, the Steelers were trying to have Thornhill go one way and send both cornerbacks the other way \u2014 baiting Darnold into throwing into double coverage.<\/p>\n

But Slay didn\u2019t peel off his man, leaving Ramsey in solo coverage. You can see in the second clip that as Thornhill turns around, before the ball was even caught by Tory Horton, he jumped in the air and put his hand on his head, because he knew they\u2019d screwed up their own adjustment.<\/p>\n

\"PittsburghPittsburgh Steelers cornerback Jalen Ramsey during a game against the Seattle Seahawks on Sept. 16, 2025. \u2014 Ed Thompson \/ Steelers Now<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t get the job done,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u201cYou know, that\u2019s why I was a little frustrated with it.\u00a0But, you know, I take full blame on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Steelers defensive coordinator Teryl Austin was asked about what can be done about the weakness on film. The bluntness (and profaneness) of his response showed his clear frustration.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot do that shit,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s just fucking bad, and that can\u2019t happen, because it wasn\u2019t something that was un-addressed during the course of the week. Those are things that I think sometimes as a coach, get you a little bit off-kilter, knowing things that happened that you work on that still occur in the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all know in this league, if you show a weakness in something, it\u2019s going to continue to show up, keep coming at you, and we\u2019ve opened the door to have those things come at us every week now. So that\u2019s why I get a little bit pissed off. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to be better than that because I think our guys are better than that. If I thought that they couldn\u2019t do it, then we\u2019ve got the wrong guys in there. I think our guys can do it, they\u2019ve just got to get it done.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMentioned In This Article: Darius Slay<\/a> Jalen Ramsey<\/a> Juan Thornhill<\/a> Pittsburgh Steelers<\/a> Steelers<\/a> Teryl Austin<\/a> top<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Steelers News Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Teryl Austin during a game against the New York Jets on Sept.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2055],"tags":[9313,7,1815,10781,6,520,57,2360,426,30261,3444],"class_list":{"0":"post-379495","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-steelers","8":"tag-darius-slay","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-jalen-ramsey","11":"tag-juan-thornhill","12":"tag-nfl","13":"tag-pittsburgh","14":"tag-pittsburgh-steelers","15":"tag-pittsburghsteelers","16":"tag-steelers","17":"tag-teryl-austin","18":"tag-top"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115229283528958601","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}