Steelers coach Mike Tomlin won’t be making any changes to his defensive coaching staff. That doesn’t mean the defense doesn’t need to make changes.
Hall of Fame head coach Tony Dungy, appearing on Wednesday’s PFT Live, was asked to describe the advice he’d give Tomlin in order to take his coaching career to the next level.
“It starts with the defense,” Dungy said. “You’ve got a dynamic offense. The offense is always going to a little bit ahead of the defense as long as Ben Roethlisberger’s there. You’ve got so much money, salary cap money, on that side of the ball. But this defense has to be able to come up big in big moments in big games. You’ve got to be able to stop the other team and take away their No. 1 threat.
“You look at the Patriots, and that’s what they do so well. And that last Patriots game that [the Steelers] lost, Rob Gronkowski ends up being the deciding factor. This week [against the Jaguars], it was Leonard Fournette. In some way, you’ve got to get a defense that can take away what the offense does best. If you do that, reduce other teams to their second option, your offense is going to be good enough to outplay them. So that would be my suggestion: Get this defense where you can take away the other team’s best threat.”
It’s odd to hear the defense of a team known so well for stuffing offenses being described as the liability. But the results speak for themselves; the Steel Curtain is currently neither. While, as Dungy explained, the quality of the offense doesn’t require the defense to be stifling, it needs to do enough to allow a potent offense to end up with more points when the clock strikes zero. While that was the case in 13 regular-season games, the lapses happened just often enough to cause the Steelers to exit the postseason one level earlier than they did a year ago.