Steelers Pro Bowler has a colorful description of how the defense played despite the comeback win against the Jets in Week 1
He doesn’t care about the win.
The Pittsburgh Steelers may have won the battle on Sunday against the New York Jets, but if their defense continues to play like that, they will lose the war that is the NFL season. The whole goal of their offseason was to make sure what happened against the Baltimore Ravens in last year’s playoffs never happened again.
And while it wasn’t nearly 300 rushing yards allowed like what happened in Baltimore, it was 32 points and 182 yards on the ground. The team was missing their rookie first-rounder, Derrick Harmon, but that’s no excuse for what happened, and former Pro Bowl LB Patrick Queen knows it:
“We (defense) played like (expletive),” said Queen, after the game. “I am not going to sugarcoat it, we played like (expletive) and if we keep playing like that, we are going to get our face mashed in. It’s that simple. I call it like it is, and we played like absolute trash.”
Patrick Queen calls out Steelers defense
Honestly, you can’t blame Queen for his remarks. The Steelers used three of their first four 2025 NFL Draft picks to address the front seven. Harmon, Yahya Black, and Jack Sawyer. They brought in veteran LB Malik Harrison, and they just revised Cam Heyward’s contract on Saturday. Yet, it was more of the same on Sunday.
“Do I like how we played? Do I like our inability to stop the run? No,” said coach Mike Tomlin after the game. “But I loved our mindset, because our mindset shows that we were game for the fight, that we weren’t measuring it today. We were playing and playing for the win. And when we do those things, you got enough gas in the tank to finish it at the end.”
I do applaud the Steelers’ defense for coming up big in the fourth quarter, allowing the Steelers to get the ball back and ultimately win the game via a Chris Boswell field goal. The same way I applaud Jalen Ramsey for closing the game by forcing an incomplete pass.
But this was the New York Jets, and it was Week 1. Things will have to change if Pittsburgh wants to make a real run.
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