{"id":670078,"date":"2026-01-12T00:24:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T00:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/670078\/"},"modified":"2026-01-12T00:24:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T00:24:13","slug":"how-pittsburgh-steelers-can-make-life-difficult-for-texans-offense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/670078\/","title":{"rendered":"How Pittsburgh Steelers can make life difficult for Texans offense"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The Pittsburgh Steelers have an interesting challenge awaiting them Monday night. The Houston Texans are practically the Absolute Batman version of the Steelers. Good quarterbacks, each team has one very good receiver while the rest of both groups lack a proven No. 2, and two good defenses with terrific pass rushers and high-quality secondaries.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">While both teams have several similarities, the Texans have spent the 2025 season beating teams that do what the Steelers do defensively, meaning Pittsburgh should look to switch things up on that side of the ball in terms of what coverages they deploy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">As <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/shorts\/9ehRN9CUhS4\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mina Kimes<\/a> pointed out this past week, the Houston Texans\u2019 offense has been very successful against single-high safety looks. Per SumerBrain, the Texans were tied for seventh in the regular season in EPA per play against single-high coverage, throwing 13 touchdowns to three interceptions. Additionally, Houston registered 50 explosive plays (plays of 15+ yards) against single-high looks this season. Conversely, though, when the Texans face split-safety looks, their offense isn\u2019t nearly as efficient. Their EPA per play dips from 0.30 to -0.02, and their explosive play percentage drops to 11.2 percent from 17.6 percent. They\u2019ve also thrown twice as many interceptions (6) when facing split safety looks as when they face single-high coverages.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">How does that affect the Steelers? They play single-high at the eighth-highest rate in the NFL, and the most amongst AFC playoff teams. Plus, they\u2019ve also given up 30 plays of 20+ yards, which ranks 18th in the NFL. If I were the Steelers, I would deploy more two-high safety looks against Houston.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Specifically, I would deploy a lot of quarters coverage if I were the Steelers. Pittsburgh had the eighth-best success rate in the NFL when in Cover-Four this season &#8211; the Texans offense was 30th in success rate when facing quarters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">In the three games in which the Steelers deployed quarters the most &#8211; Colts, Dolphins, second game vs. Bengals &#8211; Pittsburgh won all three games by a combined score of 89-47 and had nine takeaways. If they utilize that strategy against Houston, they\u2019ll increase their chances of keeping the Texans\u2019 offense at bay.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Be sure to bookmark Behind the Steel Curtain for all the latest news, breakdowns, and more!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pittsburgh Steelers have an interesting challenge awaiting them Monday night. The Houston Texans are practically the Absolute&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":670079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2056],"tags":[7,221,253,2368,6,82724,6416,222],"class_list":{"0":"post-670078","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-texans","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-houston","10":"tag-houston-texans","11":"tag-houstontexans","12":"tag-nfl","13":"tag-pittsburgh-steelers-analysis","14":"tag-pittsburgh-steelers-commentary","15":"tag-texans"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115879285073891123","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670078","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=670078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}