Paul Zeise: Steelers defense was a lot more resourceful than good against the Patriots

Paul Zeise, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Sep 22, 2025

Published in Football

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PITTSBURGH — The Steelers defense wasn’t great on Sunday against the Patriots, just great when it had to be. And that’s why they walked out of Gillette Stadium with a big 21-14 win.

OK, I stole that line from the late great NFL Films narrator John Facenda, but to be honest, I don’t know if I even believe that. I don’t know how much of what happened Sunday was due to the Steelers’ brilliance and how much of it was due to Patriots incompetence, but the truth is somewhere in between that.

Yes, the Steelers forced five turnovers and sacked Drake Maye five times, and those high-impact plays were the difference in the game. There is a term “ball luck” that was coined, maybe Sunday, to describe a game where one team gets a bunch of turnovers bouncing their way, and that is probably a great way to describe what happened in this game.

Generally speaking, the Steelers forced turnovers but did so against a team that is loaded with turnover-prone running backs. Two of the most important sacks of the game were Maye’s fault because he is still too inexperienced to understand he can’t make a hero play every time he drops back. In time, he will learn that dumping the ball off or throwing the ball away can be a quarterback’s best friend.

I get a kick out of coaches claiming — like Mike Tomlin did Sunday — that all of those turnovers were a result of all the hard work on stripping the ball they put in every day at practice, as if every team in the NFL doesn’t do these things. The turnovers and sacks were fun, but they masked a larger issue for the Steelers — they still can’t stop opposing offenses that don’t stop themselves.

That is real and that is sustainable, and if they don’t get it fixed this will be, to quote Mike Tomlin, a historic year for the defense, just not in a good way. The Patriots sliced the Steelers defense for 369 yards and Maye was 28 of 37 for 268 yards, two touchdowns and one interception.

The Steelers were better against the run versus the Patriots than they had been, but the Patriots still managed to rush for 119 yards and averaged 4.1 yards per carry. And that is despite the fact that Patriots coach Mike Vrabel was forced to bench two of his best running backs because they kept handing the ball to the Steelers.

All of the big plays by the stars of the defense were welcome, and that is what they are paid to do. But they are going to have to do that every week if the Steelers are going to win given how bad the unit is as a whole right now.

The turnovers and ball luck are the fantasy; the reality is far more ugly.

The Steelers are the fourth-worst team in the NFL — behind only the Giants, Bears and Cowboys, who all stink — in yards allowed with 1,158 total yards (387 per game). They are the sixth-worst team — behind the aforementioned three plus the Dolphins and Bills — in rushing defense, as they have given up 418 yards in three games (average of 139.3).

They have also given up 25.7 points per game, which is ninth-worst in the NFL, and again, New England certainly could — and probably should — have added to that total.

If you ask me, the worst part of those numbers is they have been accumulated against a schedule that includes two of the worst teams they will play and a Seahawks team that will probably finish the season hovering right around .500. They have accumulated these numbers against Justin Fields, Sam Darnold and Drake Maye — which is not exactly Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow and Josh Allen.

Derrick Harmon, the Steelers’ first-round pick, made his presence felt immediately, and I think he will be a big boost to the run defense. He is big, mobile and athletic, and he can be part of the solution. Clearly the two highly paid superstars, T.J. Watt and Cam Heyward, showed up in a big way, and if that continues to happen it will help.

But Maye was able to exploit the Steelers secondary and coverage and he seemed to have receivers open all over the field. At one point, he had 13 consecutive completions and looked like he was unstoppable. He made some mistakes that a young quarterback tends to make, but for the most part, he had his way with the Steelers.

A win is a win and all those cliches that we hear thrown around when a team escapes what should have been a loss some magical way, but I am not sure how anyone could have watched that game Sunday and came away feeling better about the Steelers defense than they did before.

Yes, they limited the Patriots to only 14 points, but again I go back to struggling to determine how much of that was them and how much of it was Patriots incompetence. The Steelers are 2-1 and that’s the good news, but the bad news is it took them being plus-4 in turnovers to eek out a win over a mediocre — or worse — team.

The ball won’t bounce their way every week, which means they better improve at actually stopping opposing offenses or this will be a long season.

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