Defense waits for fallout of loss
Solid season, yes, but change coming
Minkah Fitzpatrick is about as steady as they come, on and off the field. So the two-time All-Pro safety in the Steelers secondary had to chuckle a bit when asked Thursday how he’s feeling about watching the rest of the NFL postseason from home, starting this weekend when three teams they played in the regular season will vie for spots in the AFC championship.
“I don’t think anybody in the building was expecting to not be still playing around this time of year,” Fitzpatrick said. “We have very high expectations for this team, simply because we held ourselves to a high standard throughout the year. To go out like we did and not finish for the older guys that don’t have many years left, or this may have been their last one, is very disappointing.
“Myself, personally, I try not to get too emotional about it or too low about it because it is a part of the game, but a loss like that is very hard to deal with. It does sting.”
Indeed, Fitzpatrick’s responses after a few days to sit and digest what went wrong in the only 48-37 loss in NFL history were measured. But they do serve as a reminder that while the Steelers shook up the state of the offense Thursday afternoon by effectively firing coordinator and play-caller Randy Fichtner (plus offensive line coach Shaun Sarrett), all is not well with what’s generally considered one of the league’s elite defensive units.
In totality, the Steelers fared well in the regular season, ranking third in yards allowed per play (4.9), second in takeaways (27) and second in opponent scoring percentage (points on 29.3% of drives). There was regression from their eye-popping 38 takeaways in 2019, but all in all, no major drop-off after a breakout season on that side of the ball.
“We won games and still made mistakes, and I thought our mistakes caught up to us,” captain Cam Heyward said in the moments after the playoff loss. “You look back to this game and you think, as a defense: You didn’t control the rushing, you didn’t get off the field, you didn’t get any turnovers, any sacks, and we weren’t playing complementary football to the offense. … If we had a checklist of how to play the worst game possible, we did that.”
Anytime you can say that after a heartbreaking defeat, the outlook isn’t so rosy. Now, a defense that benefited from having few holes — and continuity — as much as it did from top-end talent is staring at the possibility of a “studs and duds” approach. Fitzpatrick and NFL defensive player of the year candidate T.J Watt figure to be here for many years to come, and Heyward is still under contract along with his fellow upfront stalwart Stephon Tuitt, but change is going to come.
Surely, there’s no way to keep the whole secondary intact for a second consecutive year. Not with Mike Hilton and Cameron Sutton hitting free agency, while fellow cornerbacks Joe Haden and Steven Nelson combine to account for nearly $30 million of salary cap space next season.
“There are guys that can do what they do, but Mike and Cam are very experienced guys, and it’s hard to replace experience,” Fitzpatrick said.
It’s also hard to navigate injuries, and the Steelers dealt with a few major ones on defense. Inside linebacker Devin Bush and outside linebacker Bud Dupree were key cogs in the team’s undefeated start, and even Bush’s backup, Robert Spillane, wasn’t available for the team’s 1-4 finish in the regular season after being injured in the first half of the Washington game.
That was the team’s first loss, and one that Fitzpatrick points to as being the beginning of the end for the defense in terms of execution. In fact, Fitzpatrick used “execution” as the primary explanation for its various shortcomings late in the year, especially the wild-card game. Like closing in on a receiver to break up a pass, Fitzpatrick cut off a question about where things went wrong, and specifically whether the Steelers simply couldn’t match up with the Browns from a man-to-man standpoint.
“Nah, it was almost 100% mental,” Fitzpatrick said. “I don’t think there’s too many times where we just lost one-on-one in coverage. Maybe one third down, or we lost one-on-one in the gap. I think it was more just leaving someone wide open, which we don’t normally do. And the times we do, we lose games — for a reason.”
Fitzpatrick, who led the team with 79 tackles but also had 11 missed tackles (plus two in the playoffs), added that they could have done a better job of wrapping up Cleveland’s ballcarriers Sunday, but “when the running back’s 10 yards down the field, it’s kind of hard to tackle him.”
Yes, there’s plenty of blame to go around for the defense falling apart for the second time in as many postseason appearances. Fitzpatrick didn’t want to chalk it all up to the injuries around him, but he did say they contributed to a “boil-over effect” down the stretch. His exit interview with coach Mike Tomlin focused on his individual play, but if Tomlin had asked him about the defense as a whole, his answer would’ve come back to one word.
“I think we lacked execution overall. I think we lacked execution in the pass game, in the run game. We kind of got away from what we were used to doing, and that’s pretty much just being simple and executing the game plan,” Fitzpatrick said. “Honestly, that’s it, for real. I think it’s very simple the reasons why we lost football games. It wasn’t like we were getting outplayed or outsmarted or outhustled. It was just lack of execution on our part, as players. I think there’s a lot of things I could’ve done differently, could’ve said differently, to make sure that didn’t happen.”
“We won games and still made mistakes, and I thought our mistakes caught up to us.”
— Cam Heyward