BALTIMORE (93.7 The Fan) – It was supposed to be the strength of the team. The Steelers defense was paid nearly $19 million more than any other defense in the NFL in 2024, yet the Ravens rushed for 299 yards and it could have been more if not for kneeling at the end.
Some really interesting comments by some really good Steelers defensive players after the 28-14 loss at Baltimore.
“Guys out of their gaps, not tackling,” said captain TJ Watt. “Things that make good defenses good. It’s been a pretty rough last month of football for the Pittsburgh Steelers, especially defensively. Tonight, was unfortunately no different.”
“Stopping the run, you got to be physical, you got to whip blocks, make tackles,” said linebacker Alex Highsmith. “We didn’t do that enough tonight.”
“I think we got too comfortable,” said linebacker Patrick Queen. “Started chasing too many things. I think we just let off the pedal in all seriousness.
That can’t happen, that’s why we’re in the position we are in.”
“Having 300 yards rushing on you is worse than 300 yards passing,” said safety DeShon Elliott. “It’s will. They definitely put belt to butt today.”
“One thing I don’t like, even if we don’t have good execution,” said captain Cam Heyward. “We still have to get multiple hats to the ball. We didn’t do that today.”
Heyward said it wasn’t effort, but other watching, including other former Steelers defensive players said differently. The results speak to major issues. No running back ever rushed for 186 yards in a playoff game against the Pittsburgh Steelers. Derrick Henry ran around, by, through the Steelers defense Saturday night.
“Too many times he’s running north and south than east to west,” Heyward said. “You’d like to think we have a scheme where we want to bounce a guy out to the edge and we didn’t do that.”
“We had a plan,” Elliott said. “A plan we worked on all week. I thought it was going to be a good play. We didn’t execute it like we should have.”
Then there was the difficulty with the zone reads from Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson. Not that they hadn’t seen it before, but he often fooled the Steelers defense creating even more running room. Jackson ran 15 times for 81 yards.
“The X-factor was Lamar’s unique talents,” said head coach Mike Tomlin. “It seems like every time we got them behind the sticks, he made up for it. We got him in a possession down circumstance, he extended and won those circumstances. We never found a fluid answer all day.”
“I felt like we had a good week of prep,” Watt said. “Relatively healthy set of guys especially defensively. Put the pads on, feel like we had physical practices, didn’t correlate.”
“It sucks the way it ends,” Highsmith said.
This one ends like all the others since 2016, with a loss. This one though, they got bullied by their rival, again and they will have to live with it all offseason.