Every defense has a natural weakness to be exploited. The best defenses find ways to not only mask what actual scheme is being called on a given play, but also methods of protecting against those weaknesses with fundamental adjustments.
We take a look at how those adjustments have boosted the Steelers' pass defense in 2018:
The Steelers rank 7th in pass defense, allowing only 227.2 passing yards per game. But much like there was a tale of two halves in the Steelers' run defense agains the Jaguars, the Steelers' pass defense has seen a complete flip in yardage allowed between their first five games and their last five games.
Through five games, the Steelers allowed 69 receptions for 1,061 yards and eight touchdowns. Since, those numbers have flipped to be 63 receptions for 523 yards and three touchdowns. That's a switch from 15.38 yards per catch to just 8.30, a huge change that isn't simply explained by the switch from Artie Burns to Coty Sensabaugh.
The integrity of Keith Butler's schemes has been the main reason, and how well the Steelers have played in them. The best ways to pull off those schemes are to execute the strengths of them while protecting the weaknesses. The Steelers' leading the NFL in sacks with 37 shows they are able to play to their strengths, but it took time for them to work through their weaknesses.
The first step to doing so is to understand where the weak spots are in any given scheme, then to assign players to counter any attack against them. Early in the season, the Steelers struggled to throw counterpunches when their weaknesses were attacked.
Look back at the Chiefs game when Patrick Mahomes threw the games' first touchdown. The Steelers were in a Cover-3 zone scheme, where the natural weaknesses are seam routes by slot receivers between the deep middle safety and the deep cornerbacks that patrol the sidelines.
That's right where Chris Conley ran to, while the two closest defensive backs, Morgan Burnett and Mike Hilton, both get caught watching Travis Kelce. Neither protect the seam, and Mahomes gets an easy throw:
That touchdown was a result of Hilton and Burnett being the right players to counter the seam, but failing to do so. Other touchdowns came from opponents attacking where the wrong Steelers' players were in position to counter. In the same game, the Chiefs showed an example of this with a 25-yard touchdown pass to Kelce.
The Steelers were in a Cover 2 zone scheme, where the weakness is the deeper middle part of the field between the two deep safeties, each covering half the field. Kelce runs a deep post to the middle, where the only player that could have run with him was Vince Williams, a linebacker that doesn't specialize in coverage:
The Steelers had to polish their defense to better counter those moments when offenses believe their call is about to exploit a scheme. Here's an example when that same tight end deep-shot against a Cover-2 defense was called, but this time the Steelers have Burnett playing zone defense close to the tight end.
Burnett runs stride for stride with Mark Andrews and never presents Joe Flacco with a passing window:
Making sure the right players are in position to protect those weak spots is the first step, but finding ways to properly mask where those vulnerabilities are is where defensive coordinators look to win games through X's and O's. Butler has orchestrated more of those moments in the second half of the Steelers' first ten games.
Watch how that works to the Steelers' advantage on a 3rd-and-10 situation against the Ravens. The Steelers line up showing two high safeties in Sean Davis and Terrell Edmunds, signaling Cover 2 with certain weak spots. Flacco thinks he has John Brown's hook route in the space between L.J. Fort and Hilton. But at the snap of the ball, Davis burst forward, right on Brown's hook route, making a tackle short of the line to gain:
This is when the Steelers' defense is at its best. It doesn't require an amazing physical feat by any one player, just the proper chess pieces moving at the right moments.
These moments have become more frequent in the recent games, fooling quarterbacks into false security. Watch a similar coverage switch, where they switch from a single high safety to having two high safeties against Blake Bortles.
Bortles thinks he has a corner route against Coty Sensabaugh in single deep-thirds coverage, but Davis drops to help behind Sensabaugh, taking away Bortles' primary read. By the time the route finishes, Bortles is sacked by T.J. Watt:
These successes require each player to understand their role, execute it with precise timing, and do it consistently throughout a game. That consistency has been the goal for Butler's defense for years, but there were always gaffes by one or more players in key moments, like when Robert Golden abandoned Burns when the Jaguars' Keelan Cole caught a 45-yard bomb in the playoffs.
Those failures have been few and far between in the Steelers' current six-game win streak. If the consistent precision of this defense's schematic execution remains when they face Tom Brady and Drew Brees, Butler could prove his defense has been worth the wait.
