The Pittsburgh Steelers have been putting in the work the past couple of weeks at Organized Team Activities (OTA's) and have quite a few additions and subtractions that have happened with the secondary this off-season. The Steelers’ secondary coach Grady Brown has tremendous talent to work with in the secondary with guys like Minkah Fitzpatrick, Ahkello Witherspoon, Levi Wallace, Cam Sutton, Damontae Kazee, and Terrell Edmunds.
Brown sat down with Steelers’ reporter Missi Matthews for an interview and discusses stepping up as a secondary.
Steelers.com
On who is stepping up, filling the leadership role now that Joe Haden is no longer with the Steelers' secondary, Brown said:
"That's one of the things that I can honestly say was a blessing for me as a first year NFL coach is that we had a great room. We talk about Joe, but you take guys like Minkah, I mean they're great people. Cam Sutton, great person. Terrell Edmunds, great person, I mean we just have great people in our organization. We have great people in our DB room and all of them have been a pleasure to work with. Ahkello Witherspoon is a person that has just blossomed. You know he kind of came in at the last minute and it was kind of a rush job during the season, but the same way we saw his play evolve during the year, his personality has evolved. He's just a pleasure to be around. And even the younger guys like JP [James Pierre] and J. Layne [Justin Layne], I'm just blessed that we have a great room here. So, it's really collectively, it's great energy in our room."
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Matthews asked Brown what it was like going through free agency and retaining some of the players he named and adding other talent, like Wallace.
"Yeah, it was awesome to get those guys back that we did retain and to your point of the differences in the college game and the pro game, that was one of the differences that you know from a coach you just kind of have to be prepared to teach whoever shows up. And you do develop personal relationships with guys and you know it was a personal relationship with Spoon, there was a personal relationship with Rell, but from a business standpoint, it just doesn't always work out, so you just kind of hope for the best and you put trust in the front office that everyone will do their job at a high level and we'll show up at camp with the right ingredients you know to cook a great meal."
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"What's the one thing you want to see the secondary accomplish in 2022?"
"The one thing, I don't know if I can just say one thing, you pinning me down, I'm not an over talker, but I don't know if I can say one thing." Brown said with a laugh. "I would definitely say we have to be great tacklers, we have to be great tacklers. I mean, when we miss tackles in the secondary they normally result in explosive plays and a lot of times, touchdowns. So, we have to be great tacklers, that's been a focus of ours in the off-season. We'd like to become better communicators. We're pretty solid pre-snap, but post-snap communication has to become better, and we'd like to increase our takeaways. You know, we kind of came alive down the stretch, but we don't want to get off to a slow start this year, we want to catch. We like to say, 'we won't miss our layups.' This is not the league where you can miss a layup. We want to catch every ball that we have a chance to catch and when we want to actually intercept some balls that we have a chance to intercept."
Pittsburgh Steelers free safety Minkah Fitzpatrick (39) runs for a touchdown after recovering a fumble by Los Angeles Rams quarterback Jared Goff (16) during the first half of an NFL football game in Pittsburgh, Sunday, Nov. 10, 2019. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)
Check out the interview in its entirety here!
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