Steelers Week 2 film study: Raiders' Derek Carr picked apart zone coverage
NFL football analyst Matt Williamson will break down each of the Steelers games this season in the Trib’s Steelers Film Study. Here’s what he saw in the Steelers’ Week 2 loss to the Raiders.
In the Steelers home opener — the first time Heinz Field had been full since the 2019 season — Pittsburgh hosted the Raiders in a battle between 1-0 teams. Well, the Raiders were the team that remained unbeaten, knocking off Pittsburgh, 26-17, in impressive fashion, especially considering Las Vegas basically played five quarters of physical football the previous Monday night against Baltimore and had to travel across the country on that short week to play a 1 p.m. game.
Here are some observations from the Steelers first loss of the season:
Carr keeps driving
Sometimes you just must tip your hat to the opponent. In this case, that tipping of the hat goes to Raiders quarterback Derek Carr.
Pittsburgh did an exceptional job of taking away the Raiders running game and putting the onus of the game on Carr’s shoulders. Jon Gruden wants to run the football with heavy personnel, with a fullback or second tight end on the field, but that went nowhere. Starting running back Josh Jacobs was inactive, but the Raiders still only produced 21 rushing yards at the half. In the end, even with playing with a lead for much of the game, the Raiders only ran for 52 yards on 25 attempts. Frankly, Las Vegas’ run blocking was horrific.
However, Carr was more than up for that challenge and was the best player on either team Sunday. Carr played a great game and has really come into his own. Last season was his best as a professional, but after two excellent showings, Carr is playing even better now. Carr also deserves great credit for returning to the game after an awkward hit on his touchdown pass to Foster Moreau.
He finished the day with 382 passing yards while throwing the ball extremely well, showing great poise in the pocket and a total command of the Raiders complicated offensive system. Carr was lethal attacking every level of the field against the Steelers and now has 817 passing yards over his two games…against two of the best defenses in the NFL.
Stopping Waller
Carr didn’t complete a pass to Darren Waller, Henry Ruggs or Bryan Edwards until there was about four minutes left in the first half. Clearly the Steelers defensive game plan revolved around shutting down Waller. Pittsburgh put massive amounts of defensive personnel and resources into accomplishing this goal and, for the most part, was very successful in limiting the damage inflicted by Waller.
But Waller’s presence was certainly still felt, and his presence took away from how safety Minkah Fitzpatrick, who spent much of his day defending Waller, could impact the game in other ways. In the backbreaking play of the game, Carr threw a beautiful deep ball with great trajectory that Henry Ruggs used his amazing speed to run under for a 61-yard score. Fitzpatrick was late to recognize it because he was keying on Waller.
Zone coverage struggles
Overall, this was a mediocre performance by Pittsburgh’s secondary that played a high percentage of zone coverage by their standards. Also, the Steelers blitzing overall in this game didn’t bear much fruit, no matter what extra defender was sent at Carr, and Pittsburgh’s backups didn’t get nearly the same kind of pressure that was on display in Buffalo with a four-man rush scheme.
Kenyan Drake out of the backfield also gave Carr too many easy completions and cheap yards against Pittsburgh’s zone coverage. Hunter Renfrow gave the Steelers problems, nickel and diming his way with key short receptions much in the way Cole Beasley did in Week 1 for the Bills. Carr threw a perfect touchdown pass to Moreau, an upcoming player in his own right who had an impressive game with all the attention dedicated to Waller. Moreau played more than 50% of the Raiders’ offensive snaps as the second tight end. The Raiders peripheral pass catchers stepped up.
Edwards, a promising second year player who played the most snaps of Las Vegas’ wide outs, had a touchdown reception called back on an Alex Leatherwood hold near the very end of the half. The Raiders self-destructed at the end of the half and had to settle for a field goal. They took a 9-7 lead into the locker room and Leatherwood, who was a major liability, didn’t play in the second half because of an oblique injury.
Rushing the passer
With outside linebacker T.J. Watt leaving this game after just 16 snaps played, Melvin Ingram was called upon to play a bigger role. As he was last week as part of a rotation, Ingram was a force against the run and rushing the passer, showing rare power for someone his size. However, asking him to play in reverse or in coverage of any type is something that needs to be eliminated going forward, especially if Watt is going to miss significant time with his groin injury.
Offensive challenges
Since Gruden took over as the Raiders’ head coach for the 2018 season, his team has allowed the most points in the league over that stretch. But this looks like an improved defense over two games, and Las Vegas has dedicated a lot of offseason resources to this side of the ball.
A big free agent addition, Yannick Ngakoue, was very impressive with his ability to bend the edge without losing speed as a pass-rusher while recent free agent addition, linebacker KJ Wright, was solid in all areas and a stabilizing force for the Raiders defense.
Still, it is clear that Pittsburgh’s offense has a lot of work to do and is searching for its identity. The offensive line is just a massive overall problem. In the first halves of their two games this year, the Steelers offense has posted just seven points.
Pittsburgh produced just 31 rushing yards at the half and ended this game with a measly 39 yards on the ground. The Raiders often had an extra defender in the box, but that is how every defense plays against Pittsburgh going back to the bulk of 2020. No matter how the Steelers scheme, there just isn‘t room to run and everyone on the offense deserves blame for this critical issue. Well, maybe rookie running back Najee Harris doesn’t deserve blame.
Negative plays
Once again, the Steelers really struggled to generate positive plays on early downs, and we saw less presnap motion and creativity before the snap of the ball. The Steelers had 11 possessions in this game, but two of those official possessions came at the end of both halves with a combined one play and really shouldn’t count for this conversation.
So in reality, they only got the ball nine times. On those nine drives, they were forced into third down situations on a dozen occasions. The Steelers converted five of those attempts, as well as failing to convert on their only fourth down attempt. Of those 12 third down attempts, on average, Pittsburgh needed 7.6 yards to get a first down, which is just far too difficult.
It should be noted that the Raiders now have only allowed eight third down conversions over their two games on 24 tries by Baltimore and Pittsburgh.
Harris gets his footing
Even though Harris couldn’t get going on the ground, this was a positive performance by the Steelers first round pick. Harris beat a safety one on one with a great crisp route and then quickly got his shoulders square to the goal line and took it to the house for a 25-yard score.
Harris has rare receiving skills for a big, powerful running back. Throwing the ball to running backs on first down is the most efficient play in football. The Steelers should strongly consider using this tactic with much more regularity to help stay out of third downs all together, let alone third-and-long situations.
One more note on Harris: he has unusually long arms for a running back, which is very useful in pass protection as well as giving the young player an amazing catching radius. But in this game, those long arms came is handy with Harris’ spectacular stiff arm that sent Johnathan Abram flying. Harris will be just fine.
A few bright spots
Bright spots on offense were hard to find, but Juju Smith-Schuster’s efforts should be recognized, even though Diontae Johnson (12 targets) and Chase Claypool (8 targets) are still the focal points of this passing game. He wasn’t used downfield, as usual, but Smith-Schuster was effective out of the slot with quick-hitting passes and created yardage on his own after the catch.
His touchdown off jet motion was also creative and well executed. For the second straight week, Smith-Schuster led the Steelers’ wide receivers in snaps played.
It should also be noted that it is now pretty clear now that Pat Freiermuth is Pittsburgh’s top tight end after out-snapping and out-targeting Eric Ebron. Freiermuth is clearly the superior blocker and is a valuable young player.
As mentioned above, this is an improving Las Vegas defense. One thing that stood out was that while they might lack star power on that side of the ball, there wasn’t an obvious weakness for the Raiders, which is different for them compared to prior years. A young player for the Raiders deserves mentioning as well. Second round pick Trevor Moehrig played an excellent game by not allowing anything over his head from his deep middle safety position in this Cover 3 scheme.
Pittsburgh’s special teams also were excellent. The kicking specialists stood out, but the coverage teams and Ray Ray McCloud’s returns were also quite strong.
Questionable calls
Down the stretch of this game, with 8:36 remaining on the clock, punting the ball away while down two scores was a questionable decision by coach Mike Tomlin, who is now 2-5 in his career against the Raiders. But the Raiders ran the ball on third and 3 on the subsequent drive — also a questionable coaching decision — and gave the ball back to Pittsburgh. The next drive concluded with Chris Boswell’s 56-yard field goal late in the game to make it a one-score game. It was the longest kick in Heinz Field history and gave Las Vegas the ball up six points with 3:37 on the clock.
In a critical situation, linebacker Joe Schobert was left alone on Waller, giving the Raiders a big gain right before the two-minute warning. Dedicating as many defenders to Waller late in the game down on the scoreboard just wasn’t as feasible at that point for Pittsburgh, and its ailing defense had logged a lot of snaps at that point.
Final thoughts
The Raiders ended up possessing the football for 34:22, running 64 plays in total and Pittsburgh had to go deep into its defensive depth in this game. Fifteen defenders recorded at least one tackle Sunday, which of course, does not include Devin Bush or Joe Haden, who missed the game with groin injuries.
Injuries were obviously a huge part of this loss for Pittsburgh as were some timely penalties, but don’t forget the Raiders were the far more injured team of the two when this game began. Still, it is much more difficult to deal with in-game losses of key players as Pittsburgh was forced to do. Then, in a meaningless final play of the game, adding more injury to insult, wide receiver Diontae Johnson injured his knee.
With the status of their offense, the Steelers not only need their defense to keep the opponent’s scoring down, but right now, they need the defense to make big plays. That didn’t occur. In that regard, the loss of Watt can’t be overstated.
But more than anything, give credit to Pittsburgh’s opponent. Carr, Gruden and the Raiders kept the mistakes down and Pittsburgh’s defense — missing four starters for the better part of this contest — couldn’t totally control this football game. The Raiders were clearly the better team.
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