Levi Wallace was roll-calling for me a list of all the Steelers' cornerbacks capable of sliding inside or outside, left or right, nickel or dime, dropping back or dialing up a blitz.
"I think it helps with the different looks," he was saying after practice Wednesday at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex. “Especially here in Pittsburgh, we do it a lot. Like Cam Sutton. He was in that role last year. He could do anything. And you look at us now, without Cam, and I think they've brought in even more guys who are real versatile -- Pat P, Sully, now Desmond -- guys who can play multiple positions. It just adds to the unit.”
It was at this point that a voice emerged from a couple stalls down.
"I didn't hear my name in there," Damontae Kazee playfully interrupted us.
"I didn't see you lining up at corner," Wallace came back. "We're talking about corners here."
"You didn't see me out there at corner?" Kazee continued. "I've played corner. Ain't nobody gonna be surprised if I pop up out there at corner."
Ha! Loved it!
And the coolest part is that he's probably not stretching the truth by much, since my own list of such corners counts, as did Wallace's, Patrick Peterson, Chandon Sullivan and newcomer Desmond King. It also counts Wallace himself, as he arrived from Buffalo with slot experience even if he's been used almost exclusively on the outside in Pittsburgh. And sure enough, it counts a safety, too, in that Elijah Riley had dueled with Sullivan for starting nickel duty all through camp, though he's also a safety.
Now, add into that Keanu Neal, a safety, long being more comfortable as a de facto inside linebacker, plus Minkah Fitzpatrick being able to do anything on God's green Earth, and ...
“Oh, it’s definitely not normal," Peterson would tell me. "But it makes it harder for opposing teams to try to game plan for us, and it makes it harder for the quarterback to try to understand where guys are at certain times. We’re just trying to find a way to make the quarterback hold the ball for an extra second to help our pass rushers get to him.”
Generally, a quarterback focuses on reading the safeties before every snap, or even after the snap. And that'll no doubt continue occurring with a principal focus on Fitzpatrick. But in this environment, the standard assignments of half of everyone else on the field ... won't be standard at all.
“Exactly," Peterson replied when I raised this. "Heck, you don’t even know who’s going to be the safety now.”
Sullivan would essentially echo that for me:
“You don’t know what position we’re playing on any given play, for real," he'd tell me. "It’s kinda cool to see the versatility, the Swiss Army knives. We can throw anybody at corner, nickel or safety. We’re going to make it interesting. You'll have no idea, I might be dropping back in coverage or blitzing. You never know. You’ve just gotta see.”
“I think it'll help our secondary out because it gives us an edge on the quarterback, so they don’t know what we’re in," King would tell me after his second full practice with the Steelers. "We’ve got all these guys that can be at different positions. We’ve got different packages. When other guys come in, they might not be at the same position. They might be somewhere else.”
“We’ve got a lot of guys who can play every position," Joey Porter Jr. would tell me with a slight shake of the head. "I feel like that’s a great thing to have. A real weapon for us.”
Neat, huh?
Look, I'm not going to lie: I've had concerns about this secondary, the corners especially, and most of those have been about the apparent lack of clear roles for everyone but Fitzpatrick and, to an extent, Kazee. But, with no small amount of irony, I've increasingly come to embrace that this just might the strength of this group.
It might not be an accident, either.
Put it this way: The Steelers and the 49ers, the opponent Sunday in both teams' season opener at Acrisure Stadium, tied for the NFL lead in 2022 with 20 interceptions each. Fitzpatrick had six of those, Wallace four, Sutton three. So once Sutton was swooped away by the Lions via free agency at the stunning price of $33 million over three years, this despite Omar Khan having made a hard push to compete with that, the Steelers could've responded by trying to find another Sutton -- though there wasn't one on the open market -- or by venturing to replace Sutton's greatest strength.
Peterson's signing soon followed, then others. And with Peterson, even carrying the magnificent resume here from Minneapolis, the immediate indications from Mike Tomlin were that he'd migrate all over the secondary as needed, which he's done with predictable professionalism since reporting.
"I'm loving it, to be honest with you," Peterson would say. "Having a blast."
For now, at least officially, the depth chart shows that the outside corners will be Peterson and Wallace, backed up by Porter and James Pierre, with Sullivan at nickel, with Porter pushing Peterson inside on the dime, and with King assimilating as quickly as he can. Before long, I expect, King will supplant Sullivan.
But it also might be none of that.
Will it work?
Impossible to know, of course. If anything, it would've been wonderful had the Steelers faced any preseason opponent with a proclivity for the dink-and-dunk. That might've exposed holes that no practice could. That might've accelerated the urgency to address any communications issues.
As Peterson jumped in when I mentioned how many times after a season opener I've heard the defense complain about ...
"Wait, let me guess: Communication," he'd say with a big smile. "I know. Happens everywhere. It can be a problem. But I feel like we have enough guys who've played so much ball in their career that they understand how important communication is, how valuable it is, and understand that’s the only way that we can be as good as we want to be.”
Well, right, but wouldn't that be multiplied with all this bouncing about?
"It could. But I don't think so."
Neither does Wallace, apparently. He was emphatic on this.
“No," he began. "That's on everybody. It’s not anybody else's job to get everybody lined up. We’re all grown men. We’re all professionals. We take pride in it. We take it from the meeting room to the field, and we’ve gotta execute.”
After a brief pause, he'd add, “Man, we just led the league in interceptions, and we definitely want to continue to move that forward. We have a lot of guys who can catch, obviously. We’re trusting our coaches to put us in position, and we have to make those plays.”
No matter how many alignments?
"No matter."
