Patrick Queen might be the biggest beneficiary professionally – and the happiest, personally – to see the Pittsburgh Steelers usher in an almost entirely new coaching staff. Barely able to hide his frustration at points last year, Queen made not-so-subtle comments that this new group of coaches is far more buttoned-up than the previous staff was.
“I’m loving it. You got so much free will now to be able to [make] changes whenever you see fit,” Queen told James Harrison and Joe Haden on their podcast about the new Steelers coaches. “That was the whole thing, this whole offseason talking to the new staff, new coaches. I wanted things to be organized, I wanted things to be detailed. I didn’t want to come and feel like the same things constantly happening where we aren’t sure about this or aren’t sure about that. You get to the game and see guys doing this [puts hands in air]. It gets aggravating.”
Queen made the point that correcting one player unsure of his assignment when the other 10 understand is easy to do. Doing that with multiple players pre-snap is impossible.
“Half the defense thinks we’re doing this, half the defense thinks we’re doing that,” he said. “That’s when you got a mix up. And you can’t fix that.”
Queen’s comments certainly seem aimed at former defensive coordinator Teryl Austin. Even Harrison and Haden implied as much in response to them. Queen and Austin never seemed to be on the same page with Queen calling out “schematic issues” after a November loss to the Chicago Bears last season.
Communication breakdowns plagued the Steelers in 2024 and 2025, and though things improved slightly last season, it wasn’t good enough. Problems began out of the gate, the Steelers allowing Justin Fields and the New York Jets to score 32 points in the opener, the second-most points New York’s 29th-ranked offense registered all season. The Seattle Seahawks took advantage of coverage busts the following week with Austin vowing to fix the same issues he had promised to rectify the week before.
Pittsburgh’s defense disappointed with a 17th-place finish in scoring.
Wearing the green dot and receiving the play call, Queen was central to the team’s communication. Any breakdowns ran through him but may not have been his fault if the defense was receiving mixed messages. Queen doesn’t think that’ll be a problem under defensive coordinator Patrick Graham and company.
“I love the new staff,” he said. “Super-detailed, they’re cool about everything. We have free will to do what we gotta do.”
Graham is a highly respected and veteran defensive coordinator. He learned from Bill Belichick and Brian Flores, two defensive savants whose units rarely have major breakdown or communication chaos. The inside linebacker room is one of two positions to retain the same positional coach, longtime Mike McCarthy friend Scott McCurley is back, but McCurley didn’t play a leading role in communication breakdowns across the unit last season. Nor did the issues begin with his arrival.
Players like Queen will still need to go make the plays, but there’s a sturdier foundation. It’s hard for a defense to thrive when there’s confusion. Now, more time will be spent on figuring out what the offense is doing rather than getting the defense straightened out before the snap.