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Defense offering only little resistance

3 min read

BALTIMORE – There are shutdown defenses and those that bend but don’t break.

There are all kinds of different names for defenses.

Remember the Steel Curtain and Blitzburgh?

That’s good, because you’re not going to see either one of them anytime soon, at least not in Pittsburgh.

The Steelers are looking more like they’ve got the PennDOT defense. They offer up a couple of potholes and maybe some construction barrels to slow things down, but you still get where you want to go.

After allowing a 24-point explosion by the Cleveland Browns in the second half Sunday, the Steelers permitted Baltimore to score on its opening two possessions of Thursday night’s game at M&T Bank Stadium, meaning they had allowed 34 points in their last four quarters.

That’s nowhere near good enough.

We knew going into this season that with so many new players in new roles, the Steelers’ defense was going to be a work in progress.

But if the offense is having a tough time, – as it did on occasion against the Ravens and Browns – the defensive deficiencies are going to be magnified. And the offense just isn’t always going to be clicking on all cylinders.

As the Steelers said throughout the offseason, their defense is younger and faster than it was a year ago. But at this point, that hasn’t meant that it’s better.

And it has put a huge burden on the offense.

The Steelers most certainly hope that will not be the case all season.

Rookie inside linebacker Ryan Shazier, one of the big offseason acquisitions as the team’s top draft pick, has only shown a couple of flashes of his explosiveness. At other times, he looks completely lost.

That’s to be expected for a young player. The Steelers are struggling defensively and can’t live with those mistakes.

Against Baltimore, Shazier, who was touted as an every-down linebacker, was pulled on a third-and-14 play in favor of Sean Spence. That’s not how this was supposed to work.

This is not to say all of the Steelers’ defensive issues can be laid at the feet of Shazier. That’s not fair and it’s also not accurate.

Something as fundamental as tackling seems to be a bigger issue. For a team that spent all of training camp using live tackling drills the past two summers, that’s troubling.

Then again, with the way referee Ed Hochuli’s crew called the game Thursday night, any hit on a running back, receiver or quarterback was likely to be penalized for unnecessary roughness. Both teams hurt by questionable calls on their defenses.

The Steelers have tackled more in training camp the past two years than ever before. And their tackling seems to have gotten worse.

But, on the bright side, the defense might get better. Shazier is going to improve. Safety Mike Mitchell is going to get more comfortable working with his new teammates. And other guys are going to develop, much like Cameron Heyward did last season.

But how long will it take? Can the offense win enough games along the way for it to matter?

We just don’t know the answers at this point.

The guess here, however, is at least half the season and yes.

F. Dale Lolley can be reached at dlolley@observer-reporter.com.

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