The problem the Steelers had and still have is that if they blitz they don't have the DBs to stick to the WRs. Blitzing can get you killed if you don't have anything on the back end. Right now they have Allen and Gay... I don't think any offense is worried about going against that.
I think that's on Tomlin.
He is so one-dimensional in his zone defenses. We man-up some time but it's a very passive man-to-man coverage with cover-2 deep safeties most of the time. That's not aggressive man. It's like he admits with his coverage his CB's can't cover yet he never drafts any cornerbacks with coverage skills and the circle perpetuates itself.
The whole concept of the fire-blitz zone defense is that you don't always have 2-deep safeties. You generate so much pressure so quickly and confuse the hell out of all the coverage in the 0-10 yard downfield area (with man or zone) that you take away a quarterback's "normal" blitz reads.
That never happens anymore and was slowly phased out of Lebeau's playbook. Unless it was a short yardage, run first play, you never saw a safety close to the line of scrimmage. On almost every 3rd and long play, we played very typical cover-2 or cover-4 (umbrella) coverage. It was so boring.
From 1992-2006 (Cowher), we averaged almost SEVEN (7) sacks from our defensive backs per season.
From 2007 to 2014 (Tomlin) we average less than 2.5 sacks from our defensive backs. And that was skewed a lot in 2010 when we had 7 in Troy Polamalu's DPOY season.
In the last four seasons it's been 2, 1, 3 and zero sacks from the defensive backs.
That tells me on pass plays we are playing WAY back in zones and shells. We rarely if ever "fire blitz" anything anymore on 3rd and long except the now completely overused X-cross blitz with the inside linebackers. That's the only first blitz we seem to use anymore and that is becoming awfully easy to see coming.
After that, it's basically one or both of the OLB doing their thing, sometimes an inside linebacker comes in on a delay over the A or B gap but nothing crazy. Not the way it used to be. Not the 9 guys on the line of scrimmage chaos we sometimes flashed and actually CHANGED who rushed (now we stand everyone up thinking it fools people but we always send the same guys).
This is all on Tomlin. His conservative Tampa-2 defensive roots have messed with the defense way too much and he doesn't have any transcendent player to save his poor coaching *** like he did in 2008 and 2010.
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