Has the Steelers defense improved against tight ends?
Unfortunately, the 2016 season didn’t start off promising for the Steelers defense, while defending tight end Jordan Reed. After a strong start, where Reed caught passes for 12, 14 and 13 yards, the Steelers would slow down the big target.
Half of the next 6 attempts to Reed would fall incomplete, while the other half went for gains of 4, 5, and 5 yards.
With the game in control, Cousins would connect on one more long pass to Reed for 11 yards with 1:49 remaining in the fourth quarter.
In similar fashion, with the Steelers leading 24-9 (and already in a prevent defense) Pittsburgh relinquished a 20 yard catch to Vernon Davis (his only target and catch of the game) in which Davis gained 14 yards after the catch.
Overall the Steelers had a fairly strong night against the position, one in which ESPN Monday Night Football analyst Jon Gruden hyped as being a 3-headed monster of Reed, Davis and Niles Paul (the latter who only played on 6 snaps.)
After that strong showing by the Steelers, who won 38-16 over the Washington Redskins, the question remains: has this defense done enough to improve playing against tight ends, a position which torched them multiple times last season?
We all know the defense held the Redskins to field goals early, and continued the same “bend but don’t break” poise that was ever-present in 2015, but the Steelers D also got better as the game wore on.
Four of the ten longest plays for the Redskins were by tight ends, and the position was held to 8 catches for 84 yards and no scores; a promising outlook for the defense, if for only one game.
Then the turnovers: the Steelers forced two interceptions, including this Kirk Cousins throw which was intended for TE Jordan Reed:
#Steelers @RyanShazier's star continues to shine with this interception against the #Redskins pic.twitter.com/WyslFBUeW1
— 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗲𝗹 𝗖𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗨𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 (@steelcityundrgr) September 13, 2016
Whether or not the Steelers have mastered defending tight ends may or may not be decided in the coming weeks. They face the Bengals Tyler Kroft (in place of the already-ruled-out Tyler Eifert) on Sunday. The Eagles’ Zach Ertz is also facing a multiple-game missing injury, leaving Eagles rookie QB Carson Wentz with one less option (they still have seasoned veteran Brent Celek however).
The biggest challenge may come in Week 4 against the Chiefs’ Travis Kelce, who caught 5 passes for 74 yards in last year’s game. Before the end of this season, the Steelers will also matchup with Rob Gronkowski (Patriots) Jason Witten (Cowboys) Dwayne Allen (Colts) and any one of the several talented tight ends on the Baltimore Ravens roster such as Maxx Williams, Dennis Pitta and Crockett Gillmore.
Despite the past experience against the position, I feel the revamped Steelers defense will improve upon the poor performances against tight ends last season. Even if Pittsburgh gives up a few big games to TEs, the Steelers gave up 50+ yards to the position 8 times over 7 games last season: they won 4 of those games. (Also consider, against Kansas City, the team was without Ben Roethlisberger.)
Following the Washington game, and shutting down one of the NFL’s best in Jordan Reed, I’m ever optimistic that the Steelers defense is returning to it’s glory days.
