I don’t want to take anything away from the performance of Jordan Love and the Packers Offense. It’s hard to complete 20 passes in a row in practice, let alone a game. And we’ve always known how difficult Matt LaFleur’s scheme can be to defend.
But this game was just as much, if not more, about the ineptitude of the Steelers Defense. Things were bad entering Week 8, but after Sunday night, they now rank dead last in the NFL against the pass.
That’s not something fans in Pittsburgh are used to hearing.
There wasn’t just one thing that went wrong for the Steelers on Sunday night. There were almost too many to count.
They didn’t play the ball well, allowing two fluttering downfield floaters to turn into gains of 59 and 33 yards.
They missed tackles, allowing a staggering 256 yards after the catch.
Their coverage choices were questionable.
They were out of position frequently.
The poor coverage completely neutralized their own pass rush as Jordan Love had free and easy quick throws all night.
On top of that, they blitzed a ton (as they have all season), leaving fewer defenders in coverage. And that led to lots of 1-on-1’s and other scenarios where the secondary was outmatched and undermanned. Jordan Love finished 16 of 22 for 243 yards and 3 TDs against the blitz. Pittsburgh forced no turnovers and failed to get any sacks.
The Steelers’ struggles were largely of their own doing. One significant aspect of their game plan was to utilize lots of disguise and post-snap movement to try and throw the Packers off their game. But more often than not, that just led to Steelers defenders being out of position and that created some big plays.
On this 2nd-and-7 during the Packers’ first scoring drive of the game, the Steelers rotated-from a 2-shell look to what appeared to be single-high at the snap, only to become a Non-Traditional Tampa-2 (disguise on top of disguise):
The Packers used play-action, and along with the Steelers’ post-snap movement, that influenced Pittsburgh defenders to move all over the place.
Linebacker Patrick Queen, whose job was to open up to the passing strength (the offense’s left) and climb the middle seam, first had to account for the run fake. That sucked him up towards the line of scrimmage. The same can be said about linebacker Cole Holcomb, who was influenced by the play-action as well as Tucker Kraft’s split-flow movement across the formation:
That created a huge void in the coverage:
Completions don’t come much easier than that in the NFL.
Play-action was the least of the Steelers’ worries though. They had even more trouble with Green Bay’s use of motion.
Later on the same drive, the Packers came out in a 2x2 closed formation before motioning Tucker Kraft left to right to create a 3x1. Notice how the Steelers started the play with two defenders over the two receivers to the right:
When Kraft motioned, no one on the Steelers went with him. This was either a mistake, or Pittsburgh wanted the Packers to think that the third defender to that side who would account for Kraft would be Cole Holcomb (or perhaps that they’d be dropping out into zone):
That’s because they were trying to hide the fact that Holcomb would be blitzing:
The defender who should have been over there was safety DeShon Elliott. Again, this might have just been a mistake or a miscommunication, but it looked to me like he was purposefully late in getting over in an effort to help disguise the blitz:
Unfortunately for the Steelers, Elliott was a little too cool with his disguise. The Packers would run an Arrow screen to the outside, and Elliott wasn’t able to get over there in time:
The Packers had a numbers advantage, and then the Steelers continued their concerning 2025 trend of poor tackling:
On this next example, the Steelers would again get burned by their own disguise. At the snap, it appeared cornerback Joey Porter, Jr. and DeShon Elliott would be ready to account for Christian Watson and Tucker Kraft: