Mental lapses killed the Broncos secondary
There’s a reason why the Denver Broncos have the No. 1 pass defense in the NFL, but for whatever reason, that never seems to translate against the Steelers.
Denver’s secondary has only given up 300 yards passing twice, and they both came by the hands of Ben Roethlisberger. But when you look at how Big Ben and the Steelers accrued those yards through the air, the two games are very different.
In the first go-round, Big Ben and Antonio Brown were simply just too good; they couldn’t be stopped. Even on a lot of Brown’s big catches, Chris Harris Jr. was in outstanding coverage; the ball just wasn’t defensible.
The opposite was true on Sunday. This time, when the Steelers succeed, it was thanks to mental lapses by the Broncos secondary, leading to huge chunk plays that took Pittsburgh down the field.
For instance, Bradley Roby dropped back into coverage 39 times on Sunday, and for the vast majority of those plays, he was great. In fact, Big Ben didn’t even look his direction on 36 of those snaps, only targeting Roby three times all game. But when he did, it did not go well …
On those three targets, Roby gave up three receptions for 116 yards, an average of nearly 40 yards per reception, which, as I’m sure you know, is not good.
But in reality, those weren’t necessarily bad plays by Roby; they were dumb plays. The same goes for the 44-yard reception Harris allowed to Sammie Coats and the 23-yard reception Talib allowed to Martavis Bryant. Most all of those breakdowns came in zone coverage, where the Broncos cornerbacks either got lost in space, gave too much cushion or took the wrong man.
Yes, that’s their fault, but it’s also a product of the fact that they’ve been almost entirely a man-to-man team this season; they just didn’t know what they were doing. The same happened when Talib let Tyrell Williams get loose for an 80-yard touchdown in Week 17.
While in man-to-man, though, the Broncos were about as effective as ever on Sunday, but their zone coverage is a real issue, and it could really rear its ugly head next weekend against the Patriots.
