{"id":559549,"date":"2025-11-27T22:47:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T22:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/559549\/"},"modified":"2025-11-27T22:47:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T22:47:11","slug":"teryl-austin-responds-to-patrick-queens-schematic-issues-comment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/559549\/","title":{"rendered":"Teryl Austin Responds To Patrick Queen’s ‘Schematic Issues’ Comment"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Pittsburgh Steelers\u2019 coaches have come under media fire this week, and rightfully so for losing four of their last six games. That was amplified even further by Patrick Queen directly calling out schematic issues<\/a> on defense after the loss to the Chicago Bears last Sunday. Defensive coordinator Teryl Austin was asked about those comments and whether they led to any constructive conversations in the meeting room.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere always is. There\u2019s always gonna be things that happen every game that we\u2019re not happy with as coaches, [and] they\u2019re not happy with as players. And that\u2019s why we get back at it every week,\u201d Austin said Thursday via audio provided by the team. \u201cEvery call is not gonna be perfect, every player\u2019s not gonna be perfect, and we just have to be able to come out on the right side and make more plays than we give up. And so that\u2019s really what our focus is. Our guys have been good. They\u2019ve been good all year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe feedback is always good. I\u2019d much rather have guys that have some feedback and want to know, \u2018Hey, how can we make this better?\u2019 than guys that just throw their hands up in the air.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s probably not a great thing when the dirty laundry is aired to the public like it was, but football is an emotional sport, and Queen\u2019s comment was made in the immediate aftermath of a tough loss in a game that was very winnable. And to be fair to Queen, he is the quarterback of the defense and communicates calls from the sideline. He has to feel at least some ownership in that discussion.<\/p>\n

Now that it\u2019s been a few days and emotions are back down to a normal level, players have been taking a more political approach to airing potential grievances with the scheme. Cam Heyward took the veteran leader route on Wednesday by sharing blame between execution and play calling<\/a>. But the fact that scheme has even entered the conversation is rare \u2014 and telling.<\/p>\n

The last six weeks have been rough, but they haven\u2019t reached the depths of the three- and four-game skids we saw in 2023 and 2024. With a difficult final stretch ahead, including games against the Buffalo Bills, Baltimore Ravens (twice), the resurgent Miami Dolphins, and the Detroit Lions, it wouldn\u2019t take much for things to take a turn for the worse. The emotions and frustration could reach a boiling point if that happens.<\/p>\n

Players and coaches can take accountability all they want, but none of it means anything until they can turn things around as a defense. Mike Tomlin said he thoughtfully put the \u201chistoric\u201d defense comments out there<\/a> before the season to challenge the unit to be great. And with a record payroll, the Steelers really have no excuses left.<\/p>\n

They aren\u2019t going to finish the season in the top 10 as many hoped, but they certainly can\u2019t finish with the worst total defense in franchise history, at least not if anybody wants to keep their jobs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pittsburgh Steelers\u2019 coaches have come under media fire this week, and rightfully so for losing four of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":559550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,6,7584,57,30261,691],"class_list":{"0":"post-559549","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-nfl","10":"tag-patrick-queen","11":"tag-pittsburgh-steelers","12":"tag-teryl-austin","13":"tag-trending"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559549","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=559549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/559550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}