KISSIMMEE, Fla. -- Art Rooney II took some heat when he said last week he had seen improvement in the Steelers' defense in 2018 and the team was through replacing assistant coaches on Mike Tomlin's staff.
That was not what the very vocal crowd that wanted defensive coordinator Keith Butler replaced wanted to hear.
The reality is that Butler was in no more trouble than Tomlin at this point. Why?
Because as much as anything, the way the Steelers play defense is the way Tomlin wants them to play.
“Well, Keith Butler is obviously our defensive coordinator and Coach Tomlin as the head coach, like any head coach, has the right to be involved on both sides of the ball, which he is,” Rooney said in an interview with KDKA-FM last week. “And you know, Coach Tomlin came up as a defensive coach and I think he and Coach Butler work closely together on that. And the truth of the matter is, even though it wasn’t everything we would have hoped for, statistically, we were one of the better defenses in the league this year.”
This isn't something new. Tomlin has taken more control of the team's defense since Butler replaced Dick LeBeau as defensive coordinator after the 2014 season. Tomlin isn't making the defensive calls from play to play. That still falls on Butler. But given the two men's past working relationship, they are firmly on the same wave length on how the defense will work.
"You could see it happening," one former Steelers defensive player told me. "(Tomlin) had a very hands-off approach with Coach LeBeau. With Coach Butler, (Tomlin) has been more and more vocal about what he wants and how he wants it done. It's (Tomlin's) defense. He's got his stamp all over it."
So if Tomlin had been inclined to replace Butler, he might as well have been replacing himself, as well.
That wasn't always the case. A former defensive coordinator himself before coming to the Steelers, Tomlin had specific ideas about how to run a defense.
But when he was hired to replace Bill Cowher in 2007, one of the caveats was that he would keep the highly-respected LeBeau around. And why not? The Steelers had just won the Super Bowl after the 2005 season and LeBeau's defenses, led by veteran stars such as Troy Polamalu and James Farrior, among others, was one of the best in the league.
However, as that defense aged, LeBeau's reluctance to put young players on the field became an issue. And picking at the bottom of the first round of the draft each year, the Steelers weren't able to capably replace players such as Polamalu, Aaron Smith, Casey Hampton and Farrior.
Without his veteran stars, the Steelers were ranked 18th in both points and yards allowed in LeBeau's final season. So Butler replaced LeBeau after the 2014 season, with LeBeau resigning and then resurfacing with the Titans, where he coached for two more seasons.
Since then, the Steelers' defense has ranked 21st, 12th, 5th and 6th in the league in yards allowed and, perhaps more important, 11th, 10th, 7th and 16th in points allowed the past four seasons. It's gotten incrementally better for the most part, but not fast enough for some.
That's led to the calls for Butler to be fired.
"The coaches can only do so much," Cam Heyward said this week while participating in practices for the Pro Bowl at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex. "It’s up to the players to execute. Put that pressure on me. I want to lead this group, and I want to do what’s right. It’s up to the players to do their jobs. It’s up to us to execute what they give us. I think our game plans are great, but if we don’t execute them, we don’t do what we’re supposed to do all the time, there’s room for error. We have to become a complete defense."
That's the goal. And it's taking longer than many people would like.
Part of that is not only eliminating big plays, but also making some. And the Steelers did far too little of that in 2018.
While the 2017 defense was fifth in the league in total defense and seventh in points allowed, it faltered at inopportune times. The Steelers allowed 14 pass plays of 40 or more yards and three more on rushing plays. That was too much.
So the emphasis last offseason was made on keeping the ball in front of the defense and cutting down on the big plays. The Steelers did that, allowing just seven pass plays of 40 or more yards and just one rushing play.
But it also affected the big plays the defense made. The Steelers forced just 15 turnovers, down from 22 the previous season. Those 15 turnovers ranked 29th in the league.
"We need to pick up our turnover count, me as well," Heyward said. "We’ve gotten a lot of sacks but we haven’t gotten a lot of fumbles. That’s one aspect we need to improve. Our turnovers need to go up. We’ve got to get them in bunches. The more turnovers we have, the more opportunities for our offense where we can shut the door. We had a lot of leads in games or were about to take the lead, but we didn’t finish the game. That’s an opportunity for us. You look at the year before, I thought we finished more games than not. It put us in a better spot. This year, those didn’t go our way."
That echoed part of Rooney and Tomlin's assessments of the season, as well. So you can expect that to be the point of emphasis this offseason.
Ironically, that also was an emphasis by the Steelers in 2015, Butler's first year as the team's defensive coordinator.
One tenet of LeBeau's defense was that he didn't necessarily care about high-pedigree cornerbacks. He wanted his corners to be outstanding tacklers and really didn't care if they took the ball away. It's why a player such as Ike Taylor, who had 14 interceptions in a 12-year career, was so valued by the Steelers.
Ironically, LeBeau, who made it to the Pro Football Hall of Fame after a playing career that saw him record 62 career interceptions -- a fact he liked to mention to his secondary quite often -- wasn't as concerned with that facet of the game as much as a coach. He wanted tacklers who could cover and keep the ball in front of them.
But in 2015, the Steelers selected ball-hawking but undersized corner Senquez Golson in the second round of the draft, then took Doran Grant, who had eight interceptions in his two seasons as a starter at Ohio State, in the fourth round. They finished up by taking a flyer on Louisville's Gerod Holliman, the epitome of a college ballhawking safety in the seventh round. Holliman had plenty of holes in his game, but had tied an NCAA record in 2014 with 14 interceptions.
Unfortunately for the Steelers, none of those players worked out. Golson got hurt in training camp as a rookie and continued to have injury issues before being released in 2017 without ever appearing in a game. Holliman didn't make it out of training camp and Grant was released in 2016 and has bounced around the league since.
The defense also has become less reliant on its outside linebackers rushing the passer and more on having them become complete players.
Though the Steelers have at least tied for the league lead in sacks the past two seasons, the outside linebackers have rushed the passer less and less -- despite T.J. Watt leading the team with 13 sacks this season.
It's been a learning process to be sure. And with that process has come some growing pains.
"I think we did some good things," Watt told me this week of the team's defense in 2018. "We started off too slow and we didn’t give ourselves enough chances to close out games. As the season progressed, we improved. I was really happy with the pressure we got on quarterbacks and the coverage toward the back end of the season. We just spotted teams too many points, especially on the first drives of games. That’s completely unacceptable. We need to have the trust of our offense at all times and I think that’s where it was at the end of the season."
Heyward agreed with that point and added he also saw improvement.
"I thought we stopped the run more often than not. We led the league in sacks. I saw growth in a lot of guys. Bud Dupree didn’t always have the sacks he wanted, but he grew as a player, knowing the defense and the awareness. T.J., you don’t just get 13 sacks and not grow. Javon Hargrave, Stephon Tuitt, those guys really rose to the challenge. I think we took a lot of good steps."
All of the players mentioned by Heyward play in the front seven. And that's part of the problem.
The Steelers haven't had much success with their defensive back selections in the draft -- perhaps in part because they've changed what they're looking for.
In addition to the aforementioned 2015 draft, the Steelers tried again to bolster their secondary in 2016, taking corner Artie Burns in the first round. The team would have preferred Houston's William Jackson, but he was taken just ahead of their pick by the Bengals.
Burns had shown promise in his final season at Miami, recording six interceptions, but the then-20-year-old corner was raw. Unfortunately for the Steelers, three years into his career and now 23, Burns was benched this season in favor of solid-but-unspectacular 30-year-old Coty Sensabaugh.
Second-round pick Sean Davis has been an average starter at safety, but the team will once again head into the draft this year needing help at cornerback, though 2017 third-round pick Cameron Sutton or fifth-round selection Brian Allen could be part of the answer.
In many cases, those players might not have gotten onto the field in their first or second years when LeBeau was defensive coordinator. He wasn't willing to live with the growing pains.
Since 2015, however, Dupree, Burns, Sutton, Hargrave, Watt and Terrell Edmunds have seen extensive playing time as rookies.
"It’s just about younger guys becoming more professional and better professionals and being comfortable with what they’re asked to do," said Heyward, who didn't play much in his first two seasons but has developed into a perennial Pro Bowl player. "The light didn’t click on for me right away, I had to keep growing."
That growth of the defense had better continue. Tomlin's professional reputation could hinge upon it.
