The Cincinnati Bengals haven’t shared a stadium with a baseball team since Paycor Stadium opened on the north bank of the Ohio River in 2000, but the Pittsburgh Steelers still threw them a curveball in the team’s 44-38 win on Sunday. Since the start of the 2024 season, the Steelers have used undrafted rookie cornerback Beanie Bishop as their slot man in their three-cornerback Nickel package. But not Sunday.
The Steelers have other extra-DB defenses, including a three-safety Heavy Nickel that features Damontae Kazee and a six-DB Dime that also has added Cam Sutton to the mix since he was reinstated from his NFL suspension in Week 9.
But on Sunday, they flipped those responsibilities. Sutton, who had played 19, 15 and 10 snaps in his first three games back, instead played 45 as the team’s primary slot cornerback. Bishop played a career-low six snaps as the Dime corner.
As head coach Mike Tomlin explained on Tuesday, the Steelers had a multi-faceted approach to deal with Cincinnati’s awesome wide receiver tandem of Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins. Higgins is a bigger, more physical receiver that plays almost exclusively on the outside. The Steelers gave Higgins to Joey Porter Jr., leaving the young corner on an island for most of the game.
Because Chase moves around more, the Steelers wanted multiple players that could deal with him, without having to constantly swap pieces. So Donte Jackson, Minkah Fitzpatrick and Sutton created a triangle of coverage options to blanket Chase while Porter handled Higgins.
“Some of the challenges in terms of how they move people around, I thought it would benefit us to have a more veteran guy in the interior of our sub package, and it would aid us, not only in terms of concept recognition, but communication,” Tomlin said.
That doesn’t mean that Bishop has lost his role. Few teams present that kind of wide receiver matchup, and Bishop’s tackling ability provides a benefit against teams that like to run out of their lighter boxes.
“Beanie still played in the game, and he’s going to be a big-time component of what we do, and we’re pleased with his contributions thus far,” Tomlin said. “But week in and week out, we divide the labor up and the effort to win that game, and that’s why we were so excited about getting Cam back. He’s a Swiss army knife, he’s an awesome communicator. He’s a high-level professional, and if you have an opportunity to utilize those talents in a game like that, it’s helpful.
“There’s some things that Beanie does better than him, and so it’s just really cool to have viable, capable guys for circumstances, because we’re going to divide the labor up as we see fit in an effort to position ourselves to win football games, and in that case, play good defense.”
