Pittsburgh Steelers Look To Fix Leaky Run Defense

The Baltimore Ravens wound up playing their third-string quarterback last Sunday. Yet the Pittsburgh Steelers still couldn’t beat them.

With undrafted rookie Anthony Brown finishing the game at QB, the Ravens beat the Steelers 16-14 at Acrisure Stadium.

The Ravens were already missing Lamar Jackson, who was inactive because of a knee injury. Then backup quarterback Tyler Huntley went into concussion protocol.

Brown was forced to make his NFL debut, which should have been a big advantage for the Steelers. However, they could not advantage because of a failure to stop the Ravens’ run game.

The Ravens rushed for 215 yards on 42 carries.

Fresh off the injured reserve list, J.K. Dobbins had 120 yards and a touchdown in 15 attempts. Gus Edwards added 66 yards on 13 tries.

The Steelers are middle of the pack when it comes to rushing defense. They rank 15^th in the NFL with an average of 115.8 yards a game.

However, stopping the run has increasingly become a problem in recent weeks. The Steelers have allowed each of their last three opponents to amass at least 110 yards on the ground.

Coach Mike Tomlin has taken notice in advance of the Steelers (5-8) visiting the Carolina Panthers (5-8) on Sunday at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte.

“Oftentimes when you’re not successful it’s both the schematics and it’s performance, and I’d say it was both,” Tomlin said of the Steelers’ inability to stop the Ravens during his weekly press conference Tuesday. “I thought they won the war of attrition as the game wore on. I thought the pile fell the direction that they desired it to. What could be second-and-8 was second-and-6. You do that consecutively, what could be third-and-4, third-and-2, those downs are played out differently in the National Football League.

“We’ve got to do a better job of getting them in position to minimize that pile. We got to come off blocks a little better. And we got to understand the weight-of-possession-down ball when you’re playing someone that’s playing the attrition game.”

The Steelers’ run defense could be challenged again this week by the Carolina Panthers.

The Panthers have had at least 185 yards rushing in three of their last four games. They rolled up 223 last Sunday in a 30-24 victory over the Seattle Seahawks as Chuba Hubbard and D’Onta Foreman each had 74 yards.

“We got some schematic work ahead of us,” Tomlin said. “We got some physical work ahead of us. The pile needs to fall the direction in which we desire it to fall. And outside of that attrition component of discussion, you got to win the weighty downs. You win the weighty downs, good defenses spend a lot of time on the sideline, not playing plays. And so that’s kind of the discussion regarding the attrition component what transpired last week.”

Panthers quarterback Sam Darnold is not particularly mobile. Tomlin thinks that could be a factor in the Steelers’ favor after facing the Atlanta Falcons and Marcus Mariota and the Ravens and Huntley in the previous two games.

“We played two run-centric teams with quarterback mobility,” Tomlin said. “So, you play two teams like you’re going to have somebody ringing up yards on you in the running game. If we played two teams that featured the passing game, you could be talking about six quarters of passing yards. I’m not de-sensitive to it, I just understand it’s the nature of the style of ball we’ve been playing of late, and we got another game that could be very similar this week. So, it does have our attention.”