Tackling to be camp priority
306.9 yards per game. They ranked 10th against the run, fifth against the pass. That’s not bad, but they were gouged on the ground in three of their four losses — Chicago (222 yards), Jacksonville in the regular season (231) and Jacksonville in the playoffs (164).
The Jaguars’ 45 points tied for most against the Steelers in the postseason.
“You remember that crap like it’s yesterday,” Butler said. “It bothers me. I know it bothers my players. We know what happened in the game — we didn’t stop the run, we let them score too much. You look at the dadgum Super Bowl, shoot there’s 1,100 yards, and how many points are scored in the Super Bowl? A ton. I don’t like the way that’s going.”
While the Steelers had good rankings on defense overall, they tied for third in the NFL with 13 passing plays allowed of 40 yards or more and tied for fourth with three run plays of 40 yards or more.
Contributing to many of those big plays was poor tackling.
“We’re going to do it in training camp,” Butler promised.
He reasoned that colleges, with their reduced allotment of 20 hours per week for structured meetings/workouts, spend much less time on fundamentals, especially tackling.
“Nobody does it in college. You look at what’s going on in college, they have 20 hours. They’re not practicing fundamentals, they’re practicing schemes.
“So when we get them, we can’t think that they know the fundamentals of playing football. We got to teach them the fundamentals of playing football. That’s our job to do that.”
Butler also noted just how close the Steelers came from 13-3 and the AFC’s No. 2 playoff seed to 8-8 and not making the playoffs at all.
“I will say this: We won five games last year kicking a field goal at the end. That one field goal at the end is the difference between 13-3 and 8-8; 8-8 is mediocre, 13-3 is OK, only OK if you look at the regular season. It ain’t worth a crap when you look at the postseason because we’re 0-1 then.”
Butler has the task of replacing Ryan Shazier at inside linebacker, most likely with veteran Jon Bostic, one of their two big free agent additions.
Among other changes on defense:
Butler has flipped outside linebackers, moving Bud Dupree to the right and T.J. Watt to the left. He is in the process of adjusting his secondary after they cut free safety Mike Mitchell; they signed veteran safety Morgan Burnett and drafted two other safeties, Terrell Edmunds in the first round and Marcus Allen in the fifth.
Sean Davis, who played strong safety last season, likely will move to free safety, although Butler said he’s not committed to that move yet.
“I like Terrell, he’s very vocal, that’s the great thing about him, but he hasn’t played at the NFL level. We know Morgan can play. We know [Sean Davis] can play, we know S.D. has a lot of range.
“Who’s going to be the post safety, who’s going to be down in the box, we haven’t made that decision yet. We’ll wait until training camp.”
That’s when they’ll tackle that, and a whole lot more.