Steelers geared up to stop RB Ajayi

Stephon Tuitt does not want to have the feeling he endured nearly three months ago in Miami, when he sat stunned and staring aimlessly at his locker over what had just happened.

And he doesn’t want to witness what he saw the past two games when he stood on the sidelines, unable to help his defense against the Baltimore Ravens and Cleveland Browns.

In those two games, the Ravens and Browns combined to rush for 353 yards and average nearly 6 yards per carry. In the previous five games with Tuitt in the lineup, the Steelers rush defense was one of the best in the league, allowing an average of 64.6 yards per game and not allowing a team to rush for more than 100 yards.

“It’s crushing me watching that,” Tuitt said. “It was just hurting me. I know we’re way better than that. I know that (Browns) game didn’t mean much, but at the same time it did.”

It did to Tuitt, and he intends to do something about when he returns from a knee injury for today’s wildcard playoff game against the Miami Dolphins, the same team that ran through and around them for 222 yards in October.

In particular, he said the Steelers intend to stop running back Jay Ajayi, who had the first of his three 200-yard games this season against the Steelers. He said it will be similar to how the Steelers shut down the league’s No. 1 rushing attack when they beat the Buffalo Bills last month, holding them to 67 yards on 18 carries.

“Our plan is to absolutely stop and destroy him, like we did in Buffalo,” Tuitt said. “I’m expecting this game to be totally different.”

Ajayi, a 6-foot, 229-pound running back from Boise State, ran for 204 yards on 25 carries in the Dolphins’ 30-15 victory against the Steelers 11 weeks ago, capping the performance with a 62-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter. It was the first time in 16 years, since Jacksonville’s Fred Taylor had 234 yards on Nov. 19, 2000, that anyone has rushed for 200 yards against the Steelers.

Only two other backs had rushed for more than 200 yards against the Steelers since the 1970 merger — Buffalo’s O.J. Simpson (227) in 1975 and Joe Morris of the New York Giants (202) in 1985.

Ajayi had seven runs of 10 or more yards against the Steelers, including three of 20, 33 and 62 yards. Before that game, the Steelers had allowed only two runs longer than 20 yards in the first five games.

The performance was surprising because Ajayi had never had more than 48 yards rushing in a game and the Steelers had not even allowed a 100-yard rusher in the previous 14 games, dating to the 2015 season.

“I know they’re going to come here with the mindset they can do that again, I don’t blame them,” Tuitt said. “They ran through us and that ticked us off. We need that respect back and we need it against the Dolphins.” The NFL had only four 200-yard rushing performances in 2016, and Ajayi had three of them — two against the Bills. Le’Veon Bell had the other (236 yards), also against the Bills.

Ajayi had the most runs of 40-plus yards (4) in the league and three of his 10 runs of 20-plus yards came against the Steelers, including that 62-yard touchdown. That play stood as the longest run allowed by the Steelers until Cleveland’s Isaiah Crowell had a 67-yard run last week when the Browns had 231 yards rushing, the most allowed by the Steelers since the Jacksonville Jaguars had 244 in December, 2007.

“With the Dolphins thinking they can do the same game plan, that’s not going to work,” Tuitt said. “It can’t work like that. We can’t have Ajayi running all over with the outside scheme. We have to show we got better.”