The Steelers' defense is at its best when it can make opposing offenses guess where its best players are lined up and how they might react in a given formation.
The defensive front has plenty of moving pieces with T.J. Watt, Alex Highsmith, Melvin Ingram, Devin Bush and Joe Schobert shifting all around the box to confuse linemen. But the secondary also needs this kind of flexibility to confuse quarterbacks who find the time to look past that front for big plays.
In recent years, that secondary has been pretty straightforward with its assignments of roles and duties. Joe Haden and Steven Nelson would play outside cornerback, Mike Hilton was the blitzing and run-defending slot cornerback, Terrell Edmunds played underneath safety, and Minkah Fitzpatrick played deep middle safety.
That's not at all what the defense looked like Sunday against the Bills.
Cam Sutton replaced Nelson on the outside, and the Steelers deployed a wide variation of players to cover in the slot. Rookie safety Tre Norwood started there but would rotate around the defense to play underneath and deep safety spots in different schemes. Taking his place would occasionally be Sutton, Arthur Maulet and even Fitzpatrick for most of the second half.
That last part is the key, because Fitzpatrick, now in his fourth NFL season and third with the Steelers, has adapted to Keith Butler's defense. In 2019 and 2020, he was always the safety in the middle who preyed on quarterbacks who wanted to attack the seams or deep post routes. That formula led to Fitzpatrick being one of the NFL's least targeted starting safeties ... and he still found a way to record four interceptions.
But great defenses adapt to maximize their strengths and disguise their weaknesses. After Sunday, limiting the NFL's second-highest scoring offense last year to just 16 points, there's a chance this group actually be great.
There's still plenty to be determined, but Mike Tomlin has made it clear there are new roles for the secondary.
For one, none of the slot cornerback options is nearly as aggressive as Hilton was from 2017-2020. But that's by design, as Hilton's presence also helped address the lack of athletic sideline-to-sideline off-ball linebackers. After Ryan Shazier's injury in 2017, it took until drafting Bush in 2019 to get even one player of that caliber back in the fold. Now with Bush and Schobert together, the Steelers can actually have their slot cornerbacks and safeties contribute more against the passing game. The Steelers blitzed only twice out of 85 defensive snaps Sunday, also indicating the team's comfort with the pass rush to get home.
Behind that, the Steelers got to use Norwood, Maulet and Fitzpatrick to float around the field, switching from underneath slot cornerback roles to deep safety roles. It wasn't just experimentation, it was deliberate.
"We did it by design," Tomlin said Tuesday of the Steelers' plan at slot cornerback. "We just have that level of respect for Josh Allen and the continuity they have. We not only mixed up our calls but mixed up the utilization of our people. When you have guys who are position-flexible with a nice skillset like Cam Sutton and Minkah Fitzpatrick and now Tre Norwood, it allows you to have some interchangeable parts. It adds some complexities that hopefully keep the dogs off you."
Norwood's still adjusting to the role after playing most of minicamp and training camp as a deep safety. He's definitely helped, but it was obvious he still needed to settle into the role Sunday. This stutter-step by Emmanuel Sanders led to Norwood giving up the seam for an open touchdown, but the Steelers were fortunate Allen missed him:
The Steelers do have players comfortable with defending those seams up the middle.
When teams are in Cover 3 zone defense, typically, quarterbacks will try to find receivers running behind an outside cornerback and the deep middle safety for big chunk plays. Over the years, the Steelers have used Fitzpatrick and other players to jump those routes, and in doing so again Sunday, made sure Allen was extremely cautious with such throws.
Watch this high throw down the seam to Gabriel Davis, but also look who's lined up in the slot for the Steelers. It's Fitzpatrick. And once he's there, you can see Allen wants no part of the back-to-back First Team All-Pro safety jumping his pass. So he elevates the throw, almost getting intercepted by Haden:
All just to avoid Fitzpatrick.
Over the next few weeks, we'll get to see how frequently the Steelers use different looks to move Fitzpatrick around the field. In the past, this wasn't much of an option because plenty of the secondary were locked into their roles and weren't as good when interchanged for other spots. Now, with Norwood and Sutton being those players who can fill different roles, Fitzpatrick can get more freedom to take on different spots.
But the complexities, as Tomlin calls them, don't end with Fitzpatrick being in a new spot and the quarterback having to be aware of that. It also goes into the Steelers' plan of daring more quarterbacks to throw right at Fitzpatrick.
Watch this play where Fitzpatrick broke up a deep middle pass while in slot coverage. The play itself by Fitzpatrick is phenomenal, but what's most intriguing is the look from above to see the whole field. Notice how the other three Buffalo receivers who attack the deep right sideline, the deep left sideline and the left flat, all are bracketed with two defenders:
That puts Allen into a decision that could have serious consequences. Because he:
A) Tries to throw between one of the three groups of double coverage.
B) Targets Fitzpatrick and risks being intercepted by the best safety in the league.
C) Tries to improvise against the best and most dangerous defensive front in football.
And while he's processing all of that, said defensive front is coming after him.
It's much harder to feel comfortable about where you're throwing if a defense has so many moving parts that you can't settle into base looks. Take this deep throw testing Sutton over the middle, where Allen opted to throw away from Fitzpatrick and tried to fit the ball between Sutton, Edmunds and Norwood:
The result was the same, and the more those kind of throws might happen during a game, the better the chance for a turnover.
This kind of play also helps the outside cornerbacks play to their roles and have less to worry about. As the safeties and slot cornerback options take up different spots and the cornerbacks don't have to compensate, they can lock in more on how offenses are targeting soft spots.
Watch how James Pierre played a seam route for this key breakup. Allen has Sanders find the soft spot of another Cover 3 zone, and this time delivers the ball right to him. But Pierre, noticing his sideline was clear of any other concerns, knows he can play the middle a little more aggressively and jumps right on Sanders to punch the ball out:
That was huge, because the next play was a Watt sack, and the play after that was a blocked punt returned for a touchdown.
Having Fitzpatrick moving around the defense with players around him who can also be flexible could be a new wrinkle that makes this defense even better than expected. It also would make for headaches for opponents trying to anticipate which looks would need to be studied and recognized the most.
We'll see how the Raiders approach the challenge.
