The Steelers closed their 2017 season with a 28-24 win over the Browns. While the main stories of the game will revolve around the Steelers finishing 13-3 and heading into their first playoff bye week since the 2010-2011 season, there is still plenty of film to evaluate from the team's final win of the regular season.
While the offense rested five Pro Bowl players in Antonio Brown, Le'Veon Bell, Ben Roethlisberger, Maurkice Pouncey and David DeCastro, the defense only rested Cam Heyward and had most of its starters in throughout the game. Despite that, they gave up several big plays and allowed 24 points to a Browns offense that ranked dead last in scoring all season and averaged only 14 points per game.
While the defense also did plenty of good things on the day, we go into the classroom to get a closer look at what didn't go so well:
DeShone Kizer faced the Steelers to begin and end his rookie season. While the Steelers made several stars sit on the bench, they still obviously wanted to win the game and complete their sweep of the AFC North.
But after the secondary played phenomenally last week against the Texans, the defense ended up allowing 272 passing yards to the Browns, as well as 61 rushing yards to Kizer. They did manage to record six sacks and set the team's single season record with 56 total sacks, as well as an interception, a fumble recovery and a turnover on downs.
But the part that didn't go over well was how they allowed five passing plays that went for over 30 yards to a struggling rookie quarterback, as well as a 20-yard quarterback scramble. Two of those five plays came on third downs, although one was a screen to Duke Johnson Jr. that ended in a forced fumble by William Gay which Mike Mitchell recovered.
But let's look at why some of those plays happened, starting with a 54-yard bomb to Josh Gordon which was initially ruled a touchdown but ended up getting the Browns to the Steelers' 2.
The Browns ran a fake reverse pass in which they had Gordon as one of three players running routes. Gordon ran a deep corner route that split Joe Haden and Mitchell, who were sitting in Cover 3 zone defense. Watch how Haden sat on Gordon's route as if he was expecting something underneath. That's what opened up the right sideline for Gordon and required Mitchell to make the score-saving tackle:
Typically, Haden should never have let Gordon get behind him on this play, as he had deep-thirds responsibility. Mitchell was playing the middle of the field and shouldn't have had to help as much as he did, but Haden bit on what he thought would be a shorter route for Gordon. He said as much after the game.
"We were expecting him to run a curl," Haden said of Gordon's longest play of the game. "He turned a deep curl into a deep seven. Everybody was expecting the same thing, so when he ran that, everyone was like, 'Ah, we weren't looking for that one.' So it was a little bit of what they did, they made plays."
That happens sometimes when you study a team's tendencies and expect one thing but get caught off-guard when they switch out of it. Gordon is a premier athlete who can capitalize on a surprised defense and Kizer delivered the perfect ball.
But for the other plays, Kizer did seem to find several ways to get matchups with his receivers on the Steelers' linebackers. One resulted in the Browns' longest play of the game, when Kizer hit Rashard Higgins on a slant route against T.J. Watt that went for 56 yards and a touchdown.
Higgins is a second-year receiver up against a rookie linebacker in man coverage. The Steelers ran a Man 2 Under defense that had most of the defense playing man coverage assignments and Davis and Mitchell with deep half responsibilities.
Where Kizer recognized the mismatch was Watt against Higgins, and that got exposed even worse when the Steelers' deep safeties were both so far out wide that they had no time to react when Higgins beat Watt on a slant route over the middle:
But one thing that I noticed throughout the game was how many blitz packages the Steelers were using that I had never seen before in all their film. That's why I asked multiple players about their use of different blitzes.
Both Mike Hilton and Haden talked to me about it after the game:
If there was any shining example of those experimental blitzes working, it was when Davis recorded his third interception of the season in the fourth quarter. Artie Burns came on a corner blitz that got through the B-gap and forced Kizer to throw a hurried pass right into the hands of Davis.
Look at how free Burns was on the blitz and how fast he got through the gap. Burns almost never blitzes the quarterback because of how good he is in coverage:
That confused Kizer and the Browns just enough for the offensive line to miss Burns and force Kizer's hand. The brilliance in this blitz call is that it overloads the left side of the Browns line and they never have the chance to call for the line to shift its protection to that side.
Even though Kizer's a rookie, a veteran quarterback would probably not count Burns as a potential rusher on this play either, which makes this call another for future opponents to have to worry about. The more looks, the more confusion teams have in preparation. Davis praised the secondary and talked about that particular interception after the game:
However one Steeler in particular was not a happy camper after the game, that being Mitchell. The safety, whom Steelers players often admirably refer to as 'Coach Mitch,' gave a rather fiery opinion of his team's performance after the game:
His take makes complete sense for a defense that ranked in the top five of NFL units in total defense, points allowed, pass defense and sacks produced. They just gave up 24 points to the Browns, the worst team in the NFL with the worst offense.
Even when you look at the fact that they did force two turnovers, three if you count the turnover on downs that won the game, and six sacks, the Steelers did allow the Browns to hang around even with the offense and special teams producing 28 points while five Pro Bowl players sat for the offense.
All things considered, the Steelers know they need to play better, but they survived a game in which several stars rested in a game that the team could have afforded to lose, but didn't, continuing their trend of winning and completing a 13-3 season to send the team into their bye week on a high note.
You better believe they'll use that bye week to fix all those problems and continue the high note.
MATT SUNDAY GALLERY
Steelers vs. Browns, Heinz Field, Dec. 31, 2017. - MATT SUNDAY / DKPS
