Bear in mind all of the storylines after the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Week 3 efficiency towards the Los Angeles Chargers, the place they briefly proved themselves to be the perfect protection within the NFL? I believe that concept is making a comeback.
The Steelers simply took on the No. 1 scoring offense within the NFL and held it to simply 16 factors. They by some means managed to beat their common factors allowed per sport of 16.2. The Baltimore Ravens had been beforehand scoring 31.8 factors per sport and had been held to just about half of that whole towards the Steelers.
Depend Dan Orlovsky as one analyst who’s now a real believer within the Steelers’ protection.
“Totally impressed with Steelers protection,” Orlovsky wrote on X. “Completely SB caliber.”
Over the primary 10 weeks of the season, the Ravens had scored 40 or extra factors on three events, and 30 or extra in 60 p.c of their video games. Their earlier low was 20 factors of their season-opening loss to the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs. Once more, the Steelers held them to simply 16.
That was largely powered by three takeaways, with large performs coming from Nick Herbig, Patrick Queen, and Payton Wilson. All three of these gamers are of their first or second 12 months with the workforce to offer an concept of how properly the Steelers have integrated new items into their already-established protection.
The Ravens’ excellence has gone past simply scoring factors, too. That they had the perfect whole offense within the league with 440.2 yards per sport, together with a league-best 182.6 per sport on the bottom. That they had simply 329 whole yards towards the Steelers, with 205 by means of the air and 124 on the bottom. That’s their second-worst dashing whole this season, behind solely the Cincinnati Bengals final week. That sport was a shootout.
Coming into Week 10 towards the Commanders, the Steelers had solely confronted one top-16 offense within the league. That was the Atlanta Falcons, who’re barely within the high half of the league. We knew we had been going to be taught a ton in regards to the protection after back-to-back video games towards the Commanders and Ravens. They handed the check with flying colours, particularly when you think about a failed pretend punt all however noticed the Commanders a free landing towards the Steelers’ protection.
How usually can a workforce beat a high offense within the league with out scoring a single landing?
Count on the Steelers’ protection to rightfully garner lots of reward this week.
