I feel that there's a misconception about out coverage against Pittsburgh. Let's take the first half for example. We rarely came with more than a 4 man rush. On 28 passing plays, we had 5 rushers on exactly 5 of them. Furthermore, Mosley was far more often in zone than not. Not only that, but he was asked to take ridiculously deep drops. The amount of space we allowed underneath was very much alarming. Here's Mosley on a 3rd and 2 (
Link), which ended up as an inevitable successful scramble by Roethlisberger. Here is Mosley almost 15 yards down the field with 10 yards to gain (
Link). He was dropping back 10+ yards before the throw on a consistent basis, flipping his hips and backpedaling from the snap. He did slip badly against Jesse James for an 11 yard gain early on, and he had another similar hesitation for a solid gain later in the game. But the issue wasn't that he was tasked with man coverage. It was that both our hook and curl drops were so deep by design that we basically made it untenable to cover underneath. It was a design flaw that was evident throughout the game. With respect to Weddle, he's unlikely to man either of the four zones considering how often he plays single-high. That's mostly because Jefferson isn't someone who you'd prefer to consistently play 10 yards off the ball. By sheer virtue of having Jefferson on the field, you're likely to keep your FS in the middle third.
