Bell: Fix to Steelers Defense Starts with This Change at Coordinator
During his final press conference of the season, Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin took the stand and acknowledged that there will changes to the team’s coaching staff for next season.
Despite no playoff wins for eight consecutive years, those changes will not include the head coach. With that in mind, what tangible tweaks should we be expecting for the organization?
Based on how 2024 concluded, changing course from Teryl Austin at defensive coordinator should be under heavy consideration.
While the offensive side of the ball continues to be a thorn in this teams side year after year, this is a franchise that is very transparent about their preference towards maintaining a strong defense. So much so that the front office spent over $27 million more than any other team in the NFL this past season, according to Over the Cap. Despite allocating a borderline egregious amount of resources in one area, the unit regressed in the regular season, finishing ninth in EPA/play and 20th in success rate according to RBSDM, before getting pummeled by the Baltimore Ravens in the playoffs. It was clear that their vision for being competitive was on the backs of a dominant defense but it was an idea that never fully developed the way that they planned.
Someone has to take the fall for the disappointing finish in the Pittsburgh and Austin seems to be the most likely victim. To be fair, Tomlin’s fingerprints are all over the defense, even if he’s not the one calling the plays on a down to down basis. But with his job secure, those modifications will have to come elsewhere. If we are to take his words at face value, Tomlin realizes that things cannot stay the same if the team wants to reach their ultimate destination, out of purgatory and back to contention.
“We have had similar results, rest assured that we’re not doing the same things hoping for a different result,” Tomlin said. “We have adapted. We have altered our approach and we will continue because we’re not getting what we seek and that’s the confetti game. It’s to be world champs.”
The best path back towards relevance could be bringing in someone with fresh, more-modern ideas to take the reins over a group that is clearly talented, despite struggles down the stretch. In order to let those ideas fully blossom, it may require Tomlin, who has a strong defensive reputation and rightfully so, to take a step back and lead with more of a hands-off approach. That decision won’t be easy but it may be necessary. If that’s the route they choose to pursue, the next coordinator needs to be a highly respected individual that he can trust to run the show. In my opinion, the name that comes to mind is Patrick Graham.
Why Patrick Graham Fits as Steelers DC
The 45-year old has a lengthy resume, one that began as a defensive assistant under legendary mastermind Bill Belichick, and has overseen the defensive line and linebackers as a position coach in New England before taking coordinator jobs in various places, such as Miami, New York and Las Vegas since. The Raiders have recently cleaned house, leaving him to free to interview for jobs across the league but it’s worth noting that he’s receiving some head coaching interest as well.
The Raiders defenses that he was responsible for were hardly overpowering, but it’s abundantly clear that Graham was able to get the most out of the personnel that he was given to work with. In 2023, his troops finished 9th in EPA/play and 11th in points per drive. When you look at the roster that he was working with, those figures become a lot more impressive. Maxx Crosby was their lone star but his running mate, long-time rusher Chandler Jones, was their second-highest paid player and he never played a snap for the team that season. The rest of the starters consisted of veteran castoffs and mid-level draft investments.
One reason I admire Graham’s work is because of how flexible he remains in his ideology, which stems from him taking bits and pieces from all of the successful minds that he’s worked with in the past and blending them together. Prior to this season, Graham was very open in a particularly insightful interview with Ted Nguyen of The Athletic and gave a peak behind the curtain of how he constructs his defense.
“There’s no Pat Graham playbook,” Graham said. “Yeah, there’s stuff that comes from my New England time, my time at Green Bay. But to me, it’s all about who do you have. What pieces do you have?”
What Does a Patrick Graham Defense Look Like?
His defensive approach has varied at different stops, so those words are more than just a catchy phrase. Lots of coaches like to talk about their adaptability but Graham’s resume shows he’s flexible beyond belief. His roots were founded in the man-coverage world but there have been stops where he’s been forced to play more zone coverage because of the talent in the secondary. His ties to Brian Flores helped mold some of the unique pressure paths that he’ll deploy but he’s changed course by dipping his toes into more of the simulated pressure world in recent years.
I like to think of Graham as a shapeshifter capable of adjusting to his surroundings and there are some specific changes that he could incorporate that would revive some life back into a Steelers defense that felt completely drained by seasons end. While in Vegas, he deployed disguised coverage contours on 36% of his calls, nearly double that of Austin’s in 2024, per Match Quarters/Field Vision. When you watch the film, his coverage matrix is more expansive and feels less predictable. Part of what has plagued the Steelers against the best quarterbacks has been that they have often been caught with their hands behind their backs due to not having the necessary counters to their primary punches.
Speaking of great quarterbacks, the AFC is loaded with them and Pittsburgh’s recent playoff defeats have come against the elites: Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson. While in-season consistency is great, the one-off game plans that a coordinator can construct against great passers is one of the more underrated, under-discussed parts of this job description. If you recall, it was Graham’s defense that handed the eventual Super Bowl champion Chiefs their final defeat last season, holding Mahomes to 5.3 yards per attempt on the day. Is that type of performance something you can count on moving forward? No. But if you’re planning to compete in the postseason, it would help to have one of the few guys that have had even a little bit of success against the reigning emperor of the conference.
This new direction isn’t sake for the sake of change, it’s necessary growth for a franchise stuck in neutral. We all know they refuse to blow it up in an effort to properly reset. Knowing they’ll run it back, what’s the worst possible outcome here? They fail to win a playoff game? They’ve been doing that for eight years now. The optimal result would be that Graham assists the Steelers in maximizing their short term window with the most amount of talent that he’s ever had at his disposal. Without an obvious franchise changing quarterback move in sight, there best path forward is to amplify their current veteran stars, T.J. Watt, Cam Heyward and Minkah Fitzpatrick by trying to field a truly dominant defense rather than merely a high quality contingent.
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