Chances are, depending on your age, you’ve never seen a Pittsburgh Steelers’ run defense this bad.
Sure, injuries have played a role in some of the struggles at stopping the run, including the loss of Tyson Alualu early in the season, and the injury to Stephon Tuitt prior to the summer that has caused him to miss all season to this point.
But that can’t be the only reason the Steelers have struggled to stop the run. They’re missing assignments, losing gaps, losing containment and look absolutely lost at times against the ground game.
How that gets fixed this late in the season is anybody’s guess, but Steelers’ second-year outside linebacker Alex Highsmith believes there’s one solution that happens to be something the Steelers can control themselves: being more physical.