Week 5 Preview: Eagles Battle Steelers for Keystone State Bragging Rights

PHILADELPHIA - The first-place Eagles will take on the unbeaten Pittsburgh Steelers for Keystone State bragging rights on Sunday, the so-called “Steagles Bowl.”

For the historians out there, “the Steagles” was the team created by the temporary merger of Pennsylvania's two NFL teams during the 1943 season when both organizations lost significant manpower to military service during World War II.

Fast forward nearly 80 years and both clubs have settled in as marquee franchises in the NFL with the Steelers the definition of continuity with three head coaches over the past 52 years, all of them winning Super Bowls.

The Eagles, meanwhile, have turned into one of the most consistent teams in the league during the Jeffrey Lurie era culminating with a Super Bowl LII championship after the 2017 season and 13 playoff appearances in this century.

At 3-0 and future Hall of Fame quarterback Ben Roethlisberger back after an essentially lost 2019 season, the Steelers may seem like a daunting next hurdle for the Eagles.

The first layer of that 3-0 onion, however, reveals opponents with a combined 1-11 record in the New York Giants, Denver Broncos, and Houston Texans, who just fired head coach and general manager Bill O'Brien.

The cliche is you can only play who is in front of you and Mike Tomlin's team deserves credit for taking care of business where it should but we would also probably have a better handle on the Steelers if a COVID-19 outbreak hadn't spread through the Tennessee organization forcing a postponement of the scheduled Week 4 game against the unbeaten Titans.

Instead, Pittsburgh effectively got an unscheduled bye week and extra time for its coaching staff to prepare for the Eagles' cross-state trip in front of about 5,500 fans, the first NFL game in Pennsylvania with fans allowed since Governor Tom Wolf eased COVID restrictions.

That part of the equation is unlikely to impact anyone outside the television reporters searching for empty sound bytes, however.

Issue No. 1 for the Eagles will be blocking the Steelers' impressive front, which includes a top-tier interior player in Cameron Heyward as well as two impact edge rushers in T.J. Watt and Bud Dupree. It will be a much tougher test for Jordan Mailata, who held up well in his first NFL start against San Francisco last week.

OFFENSIVE SCHEME: The Steelers keep it pretty simple on offense with 89 percent of their snaps coming from either their default setting of 11 personnel (three WRs, 69 percent) or 12 personnel (two TEs, 20 percent). The rest is cobbled together among 22 (one WR, 7 percent), 21 (two RBs, 2 percent), and 13 (three TEs, 1 percent).

The receivers have been a mix of JuJu Smith-Schuster, Diontae Johnson, James Washington, and talented king-sized rookie Chase Claypool.

Roethlisberger, 38, is still admittedly working his way back from elbow surgery and hasn’t been his usual self just yet. The fear is at his age he will never reach the same ceiling of Hall of Fame-play again but the veteran has been steadily improving.

DEFENSIVE SCHEME: Tomlin’s start in coaching was as a Cover-2 Tony Dungy guy but the veteran mentor has shown the ability to be malleable and innovative, changing as the game itself changes.

He’s allowed defensive coordinator Keith Butler to stick with an attacking 3-4 DNA that was built in the Bill Cowher era. The goal is always confusion with the opposing quarterback understanding while the blitz rate is tops in the NFL, the trick is finding out who is actually coming vs. who is dropping into coverage. In some ways that dates all the way back to Dom Capers in the early 1990s.

STRENGTH: It’s certainly the pass rush which is tops in the league from a production standpoint after three games per ESPN’s pass rush win rate statistic. Both Watt and Dupree are top-level edge rushers and the latter should give Mailata a far tougher test than what he saw in San Francisco last week without Nick Bosa.

The good news is that Watt is playing lights out and typically plays on the left side of the defense which means Lane Johnson.

“TJ is a dog,” former Steeler Javon Hargrave said. “That is all I really kind of told everybody. TJ really a dog, man. He got different ways he can beat you. But we got a great — I think he is going against Lane? That is two heavyweight matches, and I just kind of look forward to watching it.”

Dupree isn’t off to the swiftest start so perhaps Mailata will be able to find his footing again and hold down the fort.

“Really going up against a good edge rusher this week so just to be patient with my hands, get off the ball, those kind of things,” Mailata said.

WEAK LINK: If Carson Wentz can fix some of his mechanical issues the Steelers could be susceptible to getting gashed by Miles Sanders in the passing game, particularly linebacker Vince Williams, who has been a disaster in coverage this season. That will almost assuredly be a matchup circled by Doug Pederson and his weighty offensive coaching staff.

UNDER THE RADAR: While most of the love goes to Heyward on the D line, it is 33-year-old nose tackle Tyson Alualu who is having his best season. A former first-round pick in Jacksonville, Alualu has found his stride in Pittsburgh grading out as the No. 1 interior defensive lineman in the NFL by ProFootballFocus.com as a two-down, run-stuffer.

MATCHUP TO WATCH: Big Ben vs. the Eagle pass rush. The Eagles pass rush has been lights out over the past two weeks against a rookie and two backups. They will meet a much savvier Roethlisberger this week, who presents an interesting challenge due to his strength in the pocket. Big Ben might be even tougher to take down in the pocket than Carson Wentz, albeit without the same scrambling ability.

“I think the biggest thing is it starts with Ben and it ends with Ben,” defensive back Jalen Mills said. “He's a guy at this point right now, you see him on some plays, he's getting the ball out of his hands before the D-linemen can even really get out of their stance, and then other times, you guys know, he's a guy who can sit in the pocket, shed a sack or two and then still throw the ball down the field.

“So I think it starts and ends with him. We have to try to get him on and off of his spots and then outside of that, just playing really, really good coverage down the field.”

The D-line is cognizant of the test.

“We know it’s big,” Hargrave said. “Ben has been in the league for a long time. So we know we need to try to disrupt and try to create problems because if we give him a lot of time he can make a lot of plays happen and extend a lot of plays. So we have to be big on trying to get him down and bringing him down.”

Malik Jackson intimated that the Eagles pass rushers need to make Roethlisberger know they are there.

“He does a good job of getting the ball out,” said Jackson. “From what we saw, he’s not a big runner. I think his arm is making him stay in the pocket. You beat the O-line once, you put a good hit on him like a Joe Burrow hit on him, and I think he’ll start dancing and looking other places.

“I think that will allow us to really get after him and make him a little jittery. Just get past the line, the first person that gets hands on him, make sure you make him feel it.”

OUTLOOK: Ultimately the Steelers probably aren't scaring Kansas City at the top of the AFC and are likely not as good as Baltimore in their own division. However, it's a good team, so expecting another 2:00 AM cocktail consisting of Cre'Von LeBlanc, Travis Fulgham, and Alex Singleton to put you over the top isn't going to be a recipe for success.

FINAL SCORE:

JOHN MCMULLEN: Steelers 26, Eagles 17 (0-3-1 on the season, 1-3 vs. the spread)

ED KRACZ: Steelers 23, Eagles 20 (0-3-1 on the season, 1-3 vs. the spread)

John McMullen contributes Eagles coverage for SI.com's EagleMaven and is the NFL Insider for JAKIB Media. You can listen to John every Monday and Friday on SIRIUSXM and every Monday and Thursday with Eytan Shander on SportsMap Radio. He’s also the host of Extending the Play on AM1490 in South Jersey. You can reach him at jmcmullen44@gmail.com or on Twitter @JFMcMullen

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