Teryl Austin's perspective of designing the Steelers' defense, adjusting personnel, and calling games on Sundays comes from learned behaviors.
His three decades of coaching secondaries at the college and professional level have molded his style as a defensive coordinator. The Steelers' defense is obviously headlined by T.J. Watt, Alex Highsmith and Cam Heyward up front but the Steelers' secondary can be argued as the make-or-break point of how successful Austin's defense is year by year.
The Steelers have ranked in the top 10 in the NFL in points allowed in each of Austin's two full seasons as coordinator. The expectation is that trend continues as Austin continues to mold his style off of a developing position.
"I think that's probably the way we see the game and we probably see it unfolding a little bit different than other guys," Austin said before Wednesday's mandatory minicamp at the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex. "So far I like where we're at. I like the communication aspect of them working together. We've got some things we've got to iron out in terms of how we're going to match up and do some different things like that, but overall I like where we're trending."
The Steelers' staff has, essentially, four defensive coaches on it with Austin's inclusion. Mike Tomlin has a pedigree of coaching secondaries, current defensive backs coach Grady Brown takes the lead on the room, and assistant coach Anthony Midget brings nine years of NFL experience. The savviness of this staff helps meld together four minds to help execute plans on a daily basis.
"There's a lot of ideas, there's a lot of opportunity for conversation on, 'hey, what's the best way to do things?'" Brown said. "That's a great situation to be in from a schematic standpoint, from a secondary play standpoint."
The Steelers' secondary -- particularly the safety spot -- was snakebitten by injuries in 2023. Namely, Minkah Fitzpatrick was limited to just 10 games with hamstring and knee injuries and the trickle-down effects of those injuries affected the secondary greatly. Part of Fitzpatrick's je ne sais quoi is that he can play just about every position off of the defensive line, but Austin did not have the luxury of doing that in a larger capacity in 2023.
Keanu Neal missed the final eight games of the season with a rib injury, Trenton Thompson sustained a neck injury in December and missed the final three games of the regular season. Damontae Kazee was suspended for the final three games because of a hit on Colts receiver Michael Pittman in that same game Thompson went down.
Levi Wallace, Chandon Sullivan and Patrick Peterson, along with Neal, are no longer on the team. The overhaul during the offseason brought three new starters into the fold. Donte Jackson was acquired from Carolina in a trade for Diontae Johnson, DeSean Elliott came over after a one-year stint with the Dolphins, and Cam Sutton returned via free agency last week. Elliott is a safe bet to start with Fitzpatrick at safety while Jackson lines up across from Joey Porter Jr. and Sutton mans the nickel spot once again.
Austin mentioned getting Sutton back will be "really good" for the defense.
"We know Cam is a football player," Austin said. "He's very versatile, he can do a lot of things for us. I think he will be part of that (slot cornerback) mix as well. ... We've got a relationship with Cam so coaching Cam for -- I had hm for four years -- he can do a lot of different things. He's a really good pro. He helps in the room, he helps on the field because he can do multiple things, and so I think having him back is going to be really good for our room and for our team."
Additionally, the team has Darius Rush returning for cornerback depth, Cory Trice Jr. will make his debut after missing his rookie season with a knee injury, and Ryan Watts and Beanie Bishop are rookies who could plug in for depth options at safety and cornerback, respectively.
Watts has been making the transition to safety as a rookie, which would free up Trice to slide in for snaps behind Porter and Jackson at outside cornerback. Trice caught eyes before his injury because of his resemblance to Porter in stature, but Austin was equally impressed with how quick he was progressing pre-injury.
"I think, right now, Cory's just working his way back into getting somewhere close to full strength," Austin said. "He had a promising start last year until the injury and I think he's kind of starting to pick it back up in terms of getting closer to where he was. We really like how he's doing. We've been real careful with him because we want to make sure that we get him to (training) camp and we give him the best opportunity to succeed because we really did think that, last year, he was trending in the right direction."
But the major key for this secondary returning to form will be Fitzpatrick staying healthy. During the final week of OTAs, Fitzpatrick spoke of wanting to get back to "Minkah ball," which relates to going back to creating turnovers and being used all over the field. Austin admitted he could have done better for Fitzpatrick in 2023, even through his injuries.
"We all know what kind of football player he is," Austin said. "Like I said, the biggest thing for us as coaches is to try and get all of our guys into the best positions possible so they can play as well as they can and play up to their abilities. And so last year I probably failed in that regard because we tried to have him do too much stuff and we want to get back to really what makes him special."
