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Bengals Film Breakdown: A Schematic and Personnel Preview of the Steelers' Front Seven

Pittsburgh's defensive front is one of the best in the NFL.

Mike Santagata

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It’s no surprise that the strength of the Pittsburgh Steelers' defense is their front seven. They have a dominant defensive line consisting of a top defensive tackle, the reigning Defensive Player of the Year, and a surrounding cast of talented role players.

Despite some key injuries to their front, they led the NFL in sacks (55) last year and had a top eight pressure rate. Let’s dig into why the Steelers' front works so well.

Schematically

While nickel defense has become the most common personnel grouping, teams still need to get into their base defense to match when the offense goes heavy. For the Steelers, that base defense looks like this:

Steelers Base Odd Eagle

The Steelers have been synonymous with a 3-4 odd front over the past 25+ seasons. While they dabbled a bit more with a four down even front this past season, I think that was more so due to the injury to nose tackle Tyson Alualu.

This base defense consists of two outside linebackers who primarily rush the passer, but will drop into coverage at times. Those guys are T.J. Watt and Alex Highsmith. On the inside, they have two guys who play anywhere from 3 technique (outside shoulder of the guard) to a 5 technique (outside shoulder of the tackle). That position will be manned by Cam Heyward and Larry Ogunjobi. Finally, they will have a big defender (Tyson Alualu) head up over the center. 

The off ball linebackers in this defense get to stay clean more often due to the big nose tackle and extra defender on the line of scrimmage.Myles Jack and Devin Bush will fill that role this season.

From the base defense comes the nickel personnel. The Steelers play a variety of fronts with their nickel defense, but last year they were often in an even over front.

Steelers Even Over G

Now instead of having the head up nose tackle and a second 3T-5T, the Steelers utilize a 2i or G as their nose tackle. This is so they can bring an extra defensive back onto the field. This is typically to match the offense utilizing three wide receivers in 11 personnel. The placement of the 3T is dictated by the run strength. In an over front, the 3T is set towards the run strength. Here the tight end is to the defense’s left, so the defense sets their 3T to the left.

The main difference between these fronts is the change in nose tackle and the amount of players on the line of scrimmage.

With a G or 2i as the nose tackle, the center is now considered uncovered which changes everything for the offensive line. When the center is covered, he cannot help as much with half slide protection and it becomes more difficult to run zone concepts due to the lack of double teams. With him uncovered, he can slide either way to give help and zone concepts work a little bit better because of the combination blocks.

In these fronts, the Steelers could utilize Alualu as the 2i, but they would often place Heyward there last season. That could be due to injury, but it’s something interesting to watch.

Lastly, the Steelers will get to these overload fronts on obvious passing downs.

Steelers Odd Overload

The philosophy behind this front is to get their best players into one on one matchups. The offensive line typically has to pick their poison against these fronts. Do they opt to give help to Heyward at nose tackle or 3 technique (he lines up at both) or do they want to give help to Watt? It’s fairly common for the Steelers to place Heyward opposite of Watt so that they force the offense to slide to one or the other. Either Watt gets a one on one with the tackle or Heyward gets a one on one with the guard.

Often, the linebacker in the B gap drops out, but coach Tomlin seems to have an affinity for man free with a 5 man rush so they will rush him as well. The other idea with this front is that it can make stunts and twists even more deadly.

Overall, the Steelers do a very good job of placing their premiere players into advantageous situations with their fronts.

The Defensive Player of the Year

Watt was named the Defensive Player of the Year last season where he not only led the entire league in sacks, but also tied Michael Strahan’s 20 year record for most sacks in a single season.

When it comes to rushing the passer, Watt is more of a speed rusher and technician than anything else. He does a fantastic job with his hands to win the corner and possesses a really efficient and explosive get off as well. He really seems to want to win the outside rather than working inside or through the offensive lineman. His go-to move is a chop-rip combination to keep him clean as he bends around the corner.

His secondary move appears to be this ghost move which works really well because of how well he can bend and rip afterward.

He also uses a variety of other techniques and moves to win the corner such as a swipe, but he also can win inside or through the offensive lineman as well. If the tackle sells out against speed, then he can bullrush right through them to win.

Finally, he also does a good job of reading the pads with a counter inside as well with those same moves that can win him the outside.

Watt is also a very good run defender on the edge.

On the play above, Watt is taking on a combination block from two of the Packers' tight ends. While he gives up some ground initially, he does a great job of squeezing down when Marcedes Lewis leaves to the second level. While that’s good run defense, he turns it into a very good play because he is able to shed the block and make the stop.

This is a great example of his ability to set a hard edge. He locks out the offensive tackle and then penetrates into the backfield which forces the back to work inside towards Watt’s help. While he does not make a solo run stop, he does still get involved in the tackle, and was the primary reason this ended so poorly for Baltimore.

Lastly, Watt gives extremely high effort on the backside of runs. It’s his high effort and motor that allow him to really rack up the tackles and make an impact on more plays than he should.

Overall, Watt is one of the best defensive players in the league and the Bengals will have to do a good job of preparing for him. La’el Collins is going to have a big first test this week against Watt who lines up mostly against the right tackle. He will have to hit his landmarks and utilize more independent hands to slow down Watt. He will probably receive plenty of help, but on plays where he is on the island against the stud pass rusher, he needs to take away the outside and turn it into a battle of strength.

The Ageless All-Pro

Once again, Heyward was named a first team All-Pro last season despite being 32 years old. He sacked the quarterback 10 times, which was the second most sacks of his career. You could bet on regression finally hitting him in his age 33 season, but he looked as strong as ever this past year.

Heyward’s philosophy when it comes to rushing the passer is to run through the offensive lineman. Unlike Watt who wants to win the corner, Heyward wants to exert his will on the opposition. He has one of the best bullrushes in the entire NFL.

Typically, Heyward likes to get two hands to the inside of the guard and to just drive him backward. His hand placement is immaculate and he almost always gets the chest of the guard. It’s up to them to anchor in and/or break his leverage points. 

Here he sets it up a little bit with a jab to the inside which is fairly common for him as well. That jab makes the guard lose some of his balance and then the inhuman level of strength knocks him over the rest of the way.

He will also disengage from the bullrush with a swim move, which works because the offensive lineman is pushing forward with so much strength to match Heyward. Once they’re able to match his strength and power, Heyward can simply pull the rug out from underneath them and swim over the top. It’s a way to attack the guard when they have too much force going forward rather than playing balanced.

This push-pull swim is similar to his bullrush-swim combination, but instead of it being mostly a bullrush, this is mostly the swim move. The push-pull swim combination is one of the oldest moves a defensive lineman has. The idea is again to attack the offensive lineman’s balance and attempt to meet Heyward’s strength which is his calling card.

Similar to how Watt wants to win the outside, but will use a bullrush as a change-up, Heyward will use this shimmy-club-swim move set to attack either side of the guard. If the guard or center does not hit their proper landmarks, then Heyward can really take advantage of that with this move.

Heyward’s strength carries over into the run game as well. He misses his hand placement just a tad on this play, but it does not matter because he uses herculean strength to throw the tackle aside. Finally, he finishes the block destruction with his signature swim move and makes the stop.

Because of the injury to Alualu last season, Heyward was tasked with playing more nose tackle than before. He did an excellent job in run defense from here because of his processing to read the block in front of him. This play features a reach block from the center, which Heyward matches by taking a step in the same direction and getting his hands on the center. The guard tries to take over the combination, but Heyward has decreased his strike zone by turning his shoulder which makes it too difficult for the guard to make this block.

Heyward can also showcase awesome quick block destruction as well. He uses the momentum of the guard against him here with a quick club-swim combination. The club gives the lineman too much momentum in his intended direction and the swim finishes the play by keeping the hands off of him. Once again, he finishes the play with a stop.

The interior of the Bengals' offensive line is in for quite the test this Sunday against Heyward. To slow him down, they need to mix up their sets and play balanced. Cappa does a great job of playing balanced, but Heyward will win eventually if he knows what Cappa is attempting to do. When it comes to Volson, he should receive plenty of help when against Heyward. It’s one of the toughest draws imaginable for a guard in his first career start.

The Role Players

There are a few guys worth mentioning and talking about more in-depth on the front of the Steelers defensive line.

First, we have a friend turned foe in Larry Ogunjobi.

His calling card is his ability to explode off of the ball to penetrate into the backfield. This leads to some high risk-high reward run defense, but in terms of pass rush, it’s consistently a nuisance for the offense.

He also has some very nice pop in his hands, so the lineman facing him should try to protect themselves as much as they can from that.

Next, Alualu deserves a mention at nose tackle.

He plays great run defense and can be an absolute wrecking ball on stunts. With Alualu healthy, Heyward will not have to play as much nose tackle and they can probably play more odd fronts than they did this past season. He also works as a setup guy that will test the communication of the offensive line with his ability to penetrate and wreak havoc on stunts.

Highsmith is the third player on the front.

Highsmith is an explosive athlete who utilizes a variety of moves to attack offensive tackles. He has the ability to spin inside or outside as showcased here against the Bills, but also has flashed a ghost move that looks eerily similar Watt. 

Lastly, he can counter inside when the offensive tackle is selling out to stop his speed rush.

This makes him a pretty effective pass rusher overall and someone that becomes a threat with all of the help given to Watt and Heyward.

Jack deserves a mention here. While he has been up and down in Jacksonville, he has shown the ability to cover and use his athleticism in a positive way.

It would not be that surprising if the Steelers are able to get him to play towards the upper end of his ability because of the coaches on that side of the ball such as Mike Tomlin and Brian Flores.

The last starter is Devin Bush, but really he has been a net negative to the team.

He’s not a great coverage linebacker and he’s a liability against the run.

Hakeem Adeniji was able to clear him out of the way multiple times in their second matchup and overall Bush seemed to be circled by the Bengals' offensive coaching staff as someone to attack.

If he’s not fully kept clean by the linemen in front of him, he almost never sheds these blocks. When he faces someone like Quinton Spain, he ends up about 20 yards downfield just trying to stay on his feet.

It’s possible he improves with the new coaching staff, but it seems as if they have not been enthused with him and he is still making plays like this in the preseason.

The first round pick for the Steelers has not shown the level of consistency that they need to see. This week will be a big test for his future as a member of their team.

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Mike Santagata
MIKE SANTAGATA

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