Part II
Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.
The pass rush wasn’t actually bad to start the second half, and they were able to move Big Ben off his spot – but it was just too easy for him to drop the ball of for decent gains:
And then it went back to:
Then they covered for a bit:
And this was a push-off:
Then more soft coverage:
But then some defense!
To be frank, by this point in the game the Panthers defense probably just wanted to go home, but when everybody is standing at ten yards depth on a 3rd-and-6 it’s as if they’re not even trying:
And then our old friend the man-blitz, you don’t even need receivers to exploit the complete lack of coverage over the middle:
With a breakdown in coverage to finish everything off before Josh Dobbs took over for the rest of the evening:
I could go into depth on these plays individually, but the issues on the Panthers defense had very little to do with a failed stunt or some poor leverage, this was a defensive performance completely undone by systematic errors. Even then, it is hard to fault them for the final quarter of the game as, really for the first time this season, they were completely out of the game going into the final quarter; the lack of adjustment after the half is highly disappointing, but it wouldn’t be fair to also point out that the Panthers did get unlucky as well. The long touchdown to Brown is not a play that will work out that way most of the time and McDonald clearly pushed off on his touchdown, but the Panthers were beaten on aggregate, not just on these individual plays.
The Steelers clearly did their work and realized the Panthers play an unnecessary amount of off-coverage and took advantage, while they got caught out a couple of times on these quick hitters, on the whole they were able to gain consistent yardage without having to expose Big Ben to any pass rush. This time last season I was calling for the Panthers to move on from Mike Shula, but I don’t think that is the case with Eric Washington, he is a first-year defensive coordinator who has never been asked to design or call plays before at any level. What he needs is some help, and while it is unclear where that is going to come from, this defense is going to go into every game with the risk of being humiliated until they are able to fix some of their systemic issues.
Yes, the Panthers got unlucky, and yes, they didn’t deserve to concede 52 points, but right now this is a bad defense, and the talent isn’t being put in a position to change that. The Panthers have been lucky that they were able to get to 6-2 before somebody was really able to exploit their weaknesses, and as much as Rivera can talk about the Steelers coming in with the perfect game plan, the inconvenient truth is that that game plan is extremely simple and easy to reproduce, and that the Panthers showed almost no signs of adjusting to it as the game went on – Rivera said this is a “beg, borrow and steal league” and teams will likely begin to borrow and steal the Steelers game plan as early as this weekend against the Lions.
