But would he get the same pressure? Remember, Lloyd was playing behind Ray Seals and on the other side of Greene for what was arguable his three best years of football. There's the chance that as the D Line improves, all our LBs improve as well. Obviously, I'm not going to say J Jones = Lloyd, but I also don't think its a mutually exclusive issue as well.
I must respectfully disagree. The Steelers had increased sacks last season no question. However the sack total was "artificially" inflated due to the defense "selling out" to get those sacks. This in turn made the secondary more vulnerable which of course showed in the numbers.
A good pass rush is one in which you can get effective pressure in the base defense. In the case of Pittsburgh's 3 4 defense this comes primarily from the OLBs and we can all agree the pressure from Pittsburgh's OLBs is sub par.
Indeed, the play of the OLBs is improved by the play of the DEs. When teams had to double-team Ray Seals or Aaron Smith or Kimo von Oelhoffen or The Beard (etc.) the OLBs were often left against a single blocker.
And, I'd argue that Tuitt & Heyward are easily as good as any one of those DEs listed above. Thus, Jarvis Jones is often left against "only" a LT. The problem is that he can not beat that single blocker.
Heck, even Clark "Average" Haggans was able to occasionally beat that 1:1 blocking to create pressure.
Those are all good points. I'd throw in, however, that those other players, including Clark, played with three pretty good to very good Dlineman, with the NT often having to be double teamed and the outside guys eating up one or two lineman themselves. Without a solid NT (not necessarily what we had before, as the scheme has changed), but without a NT that needs to be doubleteamed, you leave one, sometimes two lineman open to eat up blitzes.
"Steelers play corners at their natural positions: crazy right?" should be the thread title.