One of the biggest surprises from the Pittsburgh Steelers defense through two games is the willingness to blitz. I mean a lot. And under any circumstances. It’s like defensive coordinator Keith Butler just realized how many elite athletes he has on this defense and he needs to use them.
The Steelers blitzed the Denver Broncos at every opportunity en route to a 26-21 win. After the game, head coach Mike Tomlin acted like this is something they have always done.
“We’re capable of bringing anybody,” Tomlin said. “That is our philosophical approach. We’re a blitz group. Anybody is capable of coming and that is just the code that we live by. It’s our personality. We’ll bring anyone. We’re an attacking group.”
If you go back to last season, this team wasn’t the blitz-heavy squad we’ve seen these past two games. At least not at first. It feels like about mid-season when Pittsburgh started adding in more and more blitz concepts to help bolster the pass rush.
The trade-off of a blitz-heavy scheme is it puts the secondary on an island. On paper, this seems simple. Joe Haden, Steven Nelson and Mike Hilton at cornerback along with Minkah Fitzpatrick and Terrell Edmunds at safety should be more than capable of taking care of things.
But what we have seen through two games is that isn’t the case. The Steelers defense gave up 21 points on Sunday, something they hadn’t done since November of last season. The team also gave up 279 passing yards to the Daniel Jones followed by 256 passing yard to Jeff Driskell.
One thing that made it nice last season was how Pittsburgh was able to get pressure without committing extra bodies. When the blitz-heavy stuff works, it is a blast to watch. But Pittsburgh will find out if it works against an elite quarterback next week.
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