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What’s wrong with the defense? Well, only the DL, the LB’s, and the DB’s. Other than that, they’re fine.

The DL has been hampered by Heyward’s injury. When healthy, he’s such a force that he makes everyone else that much better. Tuitt hasn’t been as effective as last season, and I’m not sure why, but last year, he was in there with a healthy Heyward and Steve McLendon. Harvrave may be hitting the first season wall right now. Rookies, unaccustomed to the NFL season, do that. Dupree sure did last year. Halfway through, they’re gassed. The other guys haven’t knocked anyone’s socks off either.

The linebackers haven’t been able to get to the quarterback and most of them seem to lack the brute force that is needed to break through blocking and meet at the QB. Only Harrison and Chickillo seem to have the speed, strength, and brute force to get that job done. I’m sick of seeing Jarvis Jones and Ryan Shazier breaking through the line and then getting stood up by a blocking back. I’m tired of seeing schemes that used to work not working any more because the players can’t get through that last line of defense. Shazier is often gold, but too often fool’s gold, either because he can’t get to the QB or he can’t get on the field because of injuries. They would have done better by picking Mosely, and need to back off the altar of speed and balance quickness with brute force.

The defensive backs are a work in progress, but they’ve been an undisciplined mess. Sean Devis, whom i like a lot, cost them the Baltimore game on special teams by failing to block the guy who blocked the punt. And he had a big hand in losing the Dalles game with the face mask penalty just before the final Dallas TD. They simply put too much on the kid’s plate. Hell, Troy Polamalu sat almost his entire rookie season, and yet they have had Davis playing CB, Safety, Slot, and Special Teams. That’s just too much, even for a kid who speaks Chinese, French, and English fluently. The guess here is that he’ll be more than okay down the road, so long as this doesn’t destroy his confidence. And so will Artie Burns, who has also been burned a few times.The veteran safeties haven’t been that much better than the rookie corners. The secondary, at least, has been more aggressive than last year. They just haven’t been better on a consistent basis.

The E-Z Pass defense just can’t stop a good offense. They can’t even slow it down for 42 seconds.

That, and injuries, have been the stories of this season so far. But the season is far from over. Dupree will hopefully be returning. The division is still very much up for grabs. The offense is rolling. Burns and Davis ARE progressing. But, for the first time in his career, Tomlin seems on the verge of losing his team, if he hasn’t lost it already. They are sloppy and undisciplined. Cleveland is not a pushover for this team, especially given Tomlin’s record against underdogs.

The next five days will tell the story of the 2016 Steelers. Tomlin must asset control and discipline and must rally a tired and disappointed team on the road against a team that hasn’t played in ten days. Sunday’s game will be – as the Rev Billy Graham would say – the Hour of Decision.

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The Dallas Cowboys are one of the best teams in the NFL, if not arguably the best right now. That the Steelers went toe-to-toe with them for 60 minutes and were seconds away from victory gives us some comfort that they are capable of playing at the highest level in this league right now, even though their record looks poor. They did not play like a sub-.500 team yesterday.

The only thing we can hope for now is that they play at that level for the rest of the season. If they do, there’s no reason that they can’t beat every single one of the teams left on their card for this season. If they can’t win at least 6 of the remaining 7 games, then they really don’t deserve to be in the playoffs this year, let alone contending for a Super Bowl.

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The truth is, the 2016 Steelers were going to go as far as their defense was going to take them and I even the most widely optimistic homer would have to admit that the Steelers defense has in fact, regressed.

Elliot essentially had two touchdown runs and one catch where he was untouched by the defense.

Sorry, that’s indicative of a defense that’s bad.

And I agree with you, Ben’s prime is getting wasted. He looked good yesterday to be sure, but even if this team gets better, it clearly isn’t the Super Bowl contender we thought it was.

Beyond that, the Steelers are now locked in a loop very much like the one they were in in 2009 when they went on a 5 game losing streak. A bad loss on the road led to a better than expected performance against a conference rival by a backup quarterback, followed by a poor outing against another division rival….

Really, things are snowballing, and snowballing the wrong way….

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