Eagles' Defense Gets Whole New Challenge in Antonio Brown, Steelers

They started out facing a hapless offense with a quarterback who hadn’t played in nearly two years and a wide receiver who was a quarterback until last year.

Then they faced another hapless offense with a brittle, aging quarterback who had won 16 of his last 42 starts and a wide receiver whose production has dropped in each of the last three years.

Now, it gets real.

The Steelers come to town Sunday with Antonio Brown, the consensus best wide receiver in the NFL, and future Hall of Fame quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, and the task will become much more challenging for a defense that has excelled the first two weeks of the season.

“There’s not many guys like Antonio Brown in the league,” Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins said this week. “Just his skill set, his route running, the amount of targets he gets, his production, his ability to stretch the field.

“The closest guy in our division is probably Odell Beckham, but the production he puts year in and year out is really unmatched.”

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Brown was a sixth-round pick of the Steelers in 2010, so the Eagles drafted Keenan Clayton, Ricky Sapp, Mike Kafka, Trevard Lindley, Riley Cooper and Daniel Te’o-Nesheim while he was available.

But nobody knew he was going to be this good.

Brown played sparingly as a rookie, then caught 69 and 66 passes his next two seasons, but from 2013 through 2015 he set an NFL record with 375 catches for 5,031 yards in a three-year span.

Brown has played 50 games since opening day 2013. Do the math and it comes out to eight catches for 104 yards per game … on the average.

“You’ve got to keep him in front of you and then when he’s in front of you you’ve got to tackle him,” Jenkins said. “He’s a great route runner, he’s got speed, he can get behind a defense, and if you play too soft, he’s a hard tackle in the open field.

“The biggest thing is you’ve got to make him earn it all the way down the field. You can’t give him a quick one over the top, and when he does get those short passes, whether it’s a screen or just a short-to-intermediate route, you’ve got to tackle him and just limit the yards after the catch.”

Brown was 8 for 126 in the Steelers’ opener vs. the Redskins but just 4 for 39 last week against the Bengals. That was just his second game under 40 yards since the 2013 opener.

With starting corner Leodis McKelvin out for a second week Sunday, rookie seventh-round pick Jalen Mills will likely find himself across from Brown a good part of the day Sunday (see story).

“There’s a lot of receivers out there, but he’s in the top for sure,” Mills said. “Big-play guy, very explosive when you get the ball in his hands, one of the top guys in the league for sure.

“As far as lining up against him, I know it’s going to happen. Not something I’m going to key in, because during the game I’m going to see each of their receivers, so my main focus is just playing technique football and not trying to overdo anything or key in on certain guys.”

This is the first time the Eagles have had a Week 3 game in which both they and their opponent were 2-0 since the 2004 Super Bowl season, when they beat the Lions at Ford Field.

Their first loss that year didn’t come until Week 8, when they lost to the Steelers in Roethlisberger’s sixth career start.

Roethlisberger is now in his 13th season and his seventh season with Brown.

“They're always on the same page with everything they're doing,” cornerback Nolan Carroll said. “Ben’s going to hold the ball until he gets open. It's one of those things, you’ve got to cover him until the whistle's blown. It could be a short curl route and he'll convert it to a fade and Ben's just going to wait and wait and just throw it. It doesn't matter if he has four or five guys on him, he'll still launch it.

“It's things like that, those guys are consistently on the same page. You just have to be aware of that and just throw him off a little bit.”

The Eagles and Steelers have only met once since 2010, and that was in October 2012, a 16-14 Steelers win at the Linc.

Brown had seven catches for 86 yards in that game with Nnamdi Asomugha and Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie covering him. 

But Roethlisberger and Brown have become a far more dangerous duo in the four years since.

“They have that relationship where they know the looks that they’re getting, they know the weaknesses of it, and they do a good job of having a lot of different checks and outlets built into the play call so if you stack the box and it’s not a good run, they can always check to a screen,” Jenkins said. “Then you’ve got Antonio Brown in space.

“If you have too many guys on the perimeter, they run it. Everybody’s choked up, they can throw it deep. So there’s a lot of outlets for them to get out of trouble and put themselves in the best situation.

“It’s really going to come down to those 1-on-1 matchups. Can you cover? Not only cover but tackle in space 1-on-1 and make them earn their way down the field play in and play out and not give up a cheap easy one over the top.”

Kickoff at the Linc is 4:25 p.m. Sunday. The Eagles have been 3-0 eight times in the franchise's 83-year history and just twice in the last 20 years — 2004 and 2014.

“The biggest thing is you can’t run away from the challenge," Carroll said. "It’s going to be a hard matchup, but guys have to be able to be in [Brown's] face and make him earn every catch.

"He’s going to have some catches but those tackles have to come with immediate tackles afterwards and limiting yards after the catch and making somebody else beat us.”

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