When the Pittsburgh Steelers' defense crumbled down the stretch of the 2024 season, it was easy to point the finger at Teryl Austin. The defensive coordinator's vanilla scheme was quickly outwitted by talented offensive minds on opposing teams. But Austin's negative impact on T.J. Watt last season remains the elephant in the room.
Watt had a brilliant start to his 2024 campaign, recording four-and-a-half sacks, six tackles for a loss, and 10 QB hits in his first five games of the season. From the beginning of the year until the final weeks of the season, Watt was the clear frontrunner for the 2024 Defensive Player of the Year Award. Sadly, his defensive coordinator's failure to adapt led to quiet performances from Watt down the stretch.
Last year, Pro Football Focus kept track of a new stat: chip percentages for edge rushers. This tallied the total number of times NFL edge rushers were chip-blocked at the line of scrimmage before engaging with an offensive lineman.
The last updated PFF data on this stat came on December 10. This data from late in the season showed that Watt was chipped 146 times on 446 rushes, resulting in a league-high 32.47% chip rate. In comparison, Myles Garrett was chipped 90 times (26.16 percent), and Micah Parsons was chipped 55 times (18.27 percent).
So why was Watt getting chipped so much? Though we'd like to think that's it's because he's in a tier of his own among NFL edge rushers, there's a better explanation: Teryl Austin refused to move him around.
Teryl Austin must move T.J. Watt around the formation to maximize the Pittsburgh Steelers' defensive potential in 2025
Even casual NFL fans knew they only had to look in one place to find T.J. Watt when the Pittsburgh Steelers were on defense. Of his 1,040 defensive snaps in 2024, Watt was lined up as the left edge rusher (or outside linebacker) 982 times, per PFF's charting. In comparison, Watt had just 11 total snaps on the right side of the formation.
This is an unacceptable split in today's game, where defense coordinators are asked to outwit the unsuspecting offense.
In comparison, Cleveland Browns All-Pro, Myles Garrett—who played 904 defensive snaps—logged 663 on the right edge and 131 on the left edge. Obviously, this isn't an even split, but it proves that Browns' DC Jim Schwartz was more willing to get creative and move Garrett around on defense.
When opposing teams know where Watt is going to be on virtually every play, the offensive game plan is easy: line an extra guy up on his side who can disrupt Watt's path to the quarterback.
Granted, Watt could have done more against chips and double teams than he did in 2024. Too often, the four-time First-Team All-Pro was taken out of the play when he drew extra attention. Watt was also surprisingly quiet down the stretch.
Great players need to find a way to produce and make an impact, regardless of the factors going against them. However, Teryl Austin is the biggest culprit here. The Pittsburgh Steelers' defensive coordinator needs to learn from his mistakes last season and get more creative. Otherwise, the team will once again suffer from a game plan that allows offenses to keep T.J. Watt in check.
Austin is playing checkers while offensive coordinators are playing chess. And improvement won't occur unless the Steelers' defensive coordinator is willing to ditch his outdated game plan.