Where Mike Tomlin was wrong after the Steelers Week 14 loss

There were a lot of key injuries heading into Week 14

It is very important to realize the Steelers have built their defense around the linebackers. They played the game without both starting inside linebackers and their top reserve at that position while missing the best soon-to-be free agent edge rusher in the NFL. There was a huge hole in the middle of the defense that Avery Williamson and Marcus Allen did a decent job of filling. Yet, with such limited personnel in this game, there wasn’t much left for the Steelers to do.

Stefon Diggs, and Dawson Knox both made a multitude of plays that started in the middle of the field with variations of crossing routes, slants, and curl type routes. The icing on the cake was missing Joe Haden and his ability to lockdown WRs as Stefon Diggs would have had a much harder time getting free in man coverage had Haden been there. With such a blitz heavy scheme, it is never good to be missing a lot of linebackers. Yet, when your best coverage corner is out, it forces bad matchups when you have to leave defensive backs in man coverage with some of the top pass-catchers in the NFL like Diggs.

The Steelers had to deal with even more injuries during the game and all of it eventually broke the camel’s back. The Steelers had just started getting into a rhythm towards the end of the first half offensively. To a lot of people, the pick 6 was the turning point of this game. To me, there were multiple turning points, specifically with the injury to Kevin Dotson who had been filling in for Matt Feiler who got hurt in the 1st quarter. Once Dotson went down the Steelers were in trouble. J.C Hassenhauer did not impress in his time filling in at center earlier in the year, and when he came in for Dotson any semblance of a push off the line of scrimmage for the run game was gone.