Paul Zeise: Steelers will go as far as their defensive stars take them

Paul Zeise, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Nov 8, 2025

Published in Football

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PITTSBURGH — If we have learned anything about these Steelers, it is that they are capable of playing at a Super Bowl level, especially on defense, and they are also capable of looking like a bottom-feeder — sometimes within the same game.

That is life in the NFL, but the Steelers' swings seem to be more extreme than most.

Very few teams are capable of reaching the high of playing defense at a level the Steelers did Sunday in a win over the Colts. A lot of teams can achieve the level of awful the Steelers were in the second half against the Packers and the whole game against the Bengals.

That's probably the nature of this team and isn't going to change. I don't see it achieving a level of consistency because there are still a number of flaws on both sides of the ball.

The offense is not quite good enough to carry the team, but it is good enough to win if the defense does its thing like it did Sunday. Aaron Rodgers has willed the offense to be better as a whole than the sum of its parts, but it doesn't have a lot of explosive capability, and that will hold it back.

So, sure, the offense will be good enough to score 20-24 points, and many weeks that can be good enough to win. But it will never be the side of the ball that leads the way.

The defense is the unit that this season's fate rides on. That is often the case, but there were a number of years with Ben Roethlisberger when the Steelers offense was capable of bailing out the defense.

That's why it was so important Sunday against the Colts that T.J. Watt, Alex Highsmith, Jalen Ramsey and Cam Heyward all played so well and all had high-impact, game-changing plays.

For the most part, this Steelers defense is fueled by stars making big-time plays. The Steelers have superstars on defense who are capable of changing the game, and that's exactly what they need to do.

They need Watt to disrupt plays like he did with a strip sack of Daniel Jones that changed the game against the Colts completely. Ramsey is now a safety, which means he is going to be asked to make more plays from more places on the field.

Highsmith had been mostly anonymous this season and even some of last season. He was one of the highest-paid players on the defense, but some weeks — even weeks when he was playing — you didn't notice him, and there was some talk that he should be replaced permanently by Nick Herbig.

That all changed Sunday when Highsmith had two sacks and three tackles for loss and seemed to be involved in blowing up a number of other plays. It was the first time I can remember for a long time watching a game where Highsmith was clearly one of the best players on the field.

It helps that Payton Wilson and Patrick Queen made big plays, as well, but those guys aren't the ones who will lead the way.

The Steelers need their complementary players to play well, obviously, but the defense operates at its highest level when the stars shine. There are too many games recently when the stars don't come out to play and don't shine, and that leads to what we saw against the Packers and Bengals.

I have no doubt if the Steelers' stars on defense show up every week that they will have a lot of success and have a chance to win against any team. That much has played out on the field through the first eight games.

The question becomes was Sunday just a fluke, a rare day that all of the stars actually shined? Or is it the start of something big?

In some ways, the Colts game was as much about the coaching staff stepping up as anything else. They surprised the Colts with a number of different formations and changed schematically how they attacked them, especially on early downs.

That has to be a part of the equation and needs to continue. The Steelers defensively had become stale and predictable, and changing some things up each week will go a long way toward unleashing the best players.

There is no question the Steelers are on the short list of contenders in the AFC, and there is no question they can compete with anyone they might play in the playoffs. The only question is which defense shows up, and that can only be answered by the stars and how they perform.