The Steelers' defensive front was essential to its success throughout the 2017 regular season. It was a crucial part of the team's franchise-record and NFL-best 56 sacks, its ranking as the No. 5 defense in passing and total yards allowed, No. 10 ranking against the run and No. 7 in points allowed.
Led by Cam Heyward's 12 sacks, the Steelers' defensive front put pressure on opposing quarterbacks all season, but against the Jaguars the Steelers never sacked Blake Bortles and gave up 38 points. We take a closer look at where the Steelers' defensive front failed when they were needed most:
Playing better against the run was one of the biggest improvements the Steelers knew they needed to make from their previous loss to the Jaguars, when they allowed 231 rushing yards to Leonard Fournette and Chris Ivory. That didn't happen, as they allowed 164 yards in their postseason loss.
Dale Lolley and I put together a long midweek reader on what the Steelers defense would do to adapt to the absence of Ryan Shazier, and one of the adjustments was to increase their usage of four-man fronts with Vince Williams, Sean Spence and Bud Dupree as the linebackers playing off the line.
The idea of this is to essentially switch to a 4-3 front that allows one of the Steelers' defensive ends to act as the edge player of the defensive line. In this case, that's Tuitt on the left side of the screen. However, that also puts an emphasis on the linebackers playing behind that front to attack the correct gaps.
In a 3-4 defense, there are two inside linebackers and if one misses there is a chance the other could help rectify that mistake. That becomes less likely when there are three linebackers roaming behind the defensive front. While this still is technically a 3-4 because of personnel, the alignment gives the effect of a 4-3.
Watch how Williams is the middle linebacker in this situation and is responsible for the interior gap, but because more emphasis is upon him to attack the proper gap, he hesitates and allows Jaguars' fullback Tommy Bohanon to accelerate through the hole and open up space for Fournette:
Now there are multiple factors that also contribute to why Williams was slower to his gap there; the Jaguars came out and used play-action three times during their first drive for big gains to soften the linebackers and there was a receiver running a fake reverse behind the formation. Either could have been a distraction that slowed Williams' processing, but the damage was done.
Defensive coordinator Keith Butler had been trying to find ways to limit just how much the Steelers' defense could get exposed with the absence of Shazier and the team relying on Spence, a player who was without an NFL job for eight weeks this year. But for all the scheming, there are still times those players needed to step up and fulfill their role in a given play.
Too often, that didn't happen.
Here's an example of when Spence was the weak point against the run. Notice how when he is highlighted, he is attacking the correct gap. The problem comes when the Jaguars' center, Brandon Liner, starts the play double-teaming L.T. Walton with right guard, A.J. Cann.
Walton is playing as a nose tackle here and doesn't take on the double team well. Normally, in this situation, you want your nose tackle to occupy both blockers so the linebacker behind him, Spence in this case, is free to assess and attack.
But here, Liner gets free of Walton and Spence's approach to the line isn't quick enough to beat him to the spot. Not only that, but Spence allows Liner to hook his shoulder back inside of the formation, and that opens up the hole for Fournette:
The Steelers' defense was often in the right spots, but kept losing at the point of emphasis. Fournette's second touchdown run was an example of just that. The Jaguars ran a stretch run to the defense's left side and used Bohanon as the lead blocker for Fournette.
Watch how the Steelers react to the play and the positioning before Fournette breaks loose. You see safety Sean Davis in position in the backfield to attack the fullback and take him out as a lead blocker in the backfield. Outside of making the tackle, Davis does his job of neutralizing the fullback.
The problem was that there was nobody else there to help once he cleared out the fullback. Dupree, highlighted in blue, has the assignment to seal the edge and gets knocked down instead of maintaining that edge. The other opportunity was the linebacker behind Dupree, Williams (highlighted in red). He doesn't cross far enough across the formation to help when both Davis and Dupree are taken out:
The Steelers were in position to make plays, but just didn't get the job done. The Jaguars were physical, aggressive and confident when they were executing their running plays. That allowed for Bortles to be comfortable.
Even when the Steelers forced the Jaguars into third-and-long situations, the defensive front couldn't take advantage and ground the Jaguars' passing game. Here was a key moment in the fourth quarter when Bortles completed an 11-yard pass to Marquise Lee. The Steelers use a four-man rush with Dupree, T.J. Watt, Tuitt and Heyward. The Jaguars double Tuitt and leave the rest singled up, but nobody is able to collapse the pocket.
Even so, Bortles throws the ball in under four seconds in an effort to limit the Steelers' chances to get after him:
When the Steelers managed to collapse the pocket, the Jaguars still found ways to capitalize. Another factor we brought up in the Shazier midweek reader was how the Steelers were finding new ways to blitz the quarterback that weren't used for most of the season. Against the Browns, Butler called upon Artie Burns to blitz and it forced an errant pass intercepted by Davis.
The blitz was well-timed and it overloaded the left side of the Browns' line perfectly, as the left guard and tackle were dealing with Tuitt and Watt. That allowed Burns to slip through and initiate pressure without any linemen getting their hands on him.
However, when they tried that blitz against the Jaguars, it backfired. Take a look at how the overload was supposed to work in the below play. It's third-and-long and the Steelers rush five. Heyward and Dupree move to one side, while Tuitt and Watt occupy the left guard and tackle. But when Burns comes in, he runs into Tuitt's back and effectively takes both of them out.
The overload was in position to work, because you can see the center, highlighted in dark blue, never gets a chance to be involved in the play. If Tuitt maintains his spot by standing up the left guard, Burns gets his free lane to attack Bortles. But instead, Bortles gets a huge gap to attack and runs for the first down, just like we warned he would in one of our Carter's Classroom articles last week:
Keeping Bortles contained was a point of emphasis for the Steelers, but they failed to bottle him up. Another example came on third down when Bortles was looking for Mercedes Lewis and scrambled to his left in order to open him up.
Trailing Lewis was L.J. Fort. Once he gets to the sideline, Fort did a great job when he broke down and turned to face Bortles. This is what stopped the quarterback from attempting to pick up the first down with his legs. But when Fort did that, he put himself on an island between Bortles and Lewis. If he committed to the run, Bortles would throw over his head for the first down; but if he committed to covering Lewis, Bortles could scramble to convert.
Fort did a great job bluffing attacking Bortles and getting the quarterback to throw while remaining in position so that he could swat the pass away:
That might have been the most impressive play from the defense during the game, but it still showed the pass rush was not getting its job done. Even when it kept him in the pocket, it failed to move Bortles from his launch spot.
Notice how on Bortles' 45-yard bomb to Keelan Cole, he had no problems standing tall in the pocket and launching a deep pass. Notice, highlighted in the yellow circle, the position of Javon Hargrave and Walton, as neither got any movement to push the offensive line back into Bortles and prevent him from stepping up in the pocket.
From a closer angle you can see neither defensive lineman was pumping his legs to initiate momentum. This was the Steelers' problem up front, as it was these types of moments in the past where they used their depth in the defensive line to wear down tired offensive linemen and generate pressure up the middle:
On the back end of the play you can see Mike Mitchell come to help underneath against a crossing wide receiver instead of dropping back where Cole runs his deep post. While that ended up backfiring, Mitchell did what the Steelers had planned to do. I spoke with Mitchell and other members of the secondary in the weeks leading to the playoffs, and I learned that the Steelers were fine with leaving Burns in zero coverage because he had done very well in that position all year.
It just so happened that in this one moment, the Steelers' luxury of having that confidence backfired, and a rookie receiver beat the Steelers' young and talented cornerback.
But like the defensive front which had won the Steelers several games this season disappeared in the team's most dire hour, Burns and the Steelers' defense went from earning the accolades of being one of the NFL's best to being humiliated.
While there are many calling for heads to roll and for Butler to be one of them, a closer study of the game shows he put his best players in the position to win one-on-one battles they could be expected to win. They just came up short far too often to be the effective unit they had been for most of the 2017 season.