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Dominant front gives Steelers D plenty of options

PITTSBURGH (AP) — The Pittsburgh Steelers could have sent the house at Josh Allen. It would have been understandable. Preferable even.

Yet they didn’t. Mostly because they didn’t have to. Perhaps even more importantly, they didn’t need to. For all but a handful of snaps during a season-opening victory over the Bills last Sunday, the Steelers let their defensive line and edge rusher T.J. Watt go it alone while trying to make Allen’s job difficult.

It worked. The Steelers ended up sacking Allen three times — two of them courtesy of Watt, the NFL’s newly minted highest-paid defender — and never let the Bills star get into a rhythm during a dominant second half. No extra bodies or complicated schemes required.

And while coach Mike Tomlin insists his team’s almost passive approach to creating pressure on Allen is not a sign of things to come, it gives Tomlin and Steelers defensive coordinator Keith Butler another option at their disposal heading into Sunday’s visit by the Las Vegas Raiders (1-0).

“You go back and you look at the game, you see people winning on the edge,” defensive tackle Tyson Alualu said Wednesday. “You see people winning on the inside and having the quarterback not get comfortable.”

Allen had little time to set his feet and look downfield and when he did, he often saw a sea of black jerseys dropping into coverage. The Steelers blitzed just a handful of times on Allen’s 54 drop-backs and with no big plays available, he often checked down to underneath routes.

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