Patrick Graham Explains Steelers New Defensive Scheme

New Pittsburgh Steelers defensive coordinator Patrick Graham's scheme should look pretty familiar to fans of the team, but with its own unique qualities.

While speaking with reporters, Graham acknowledged that he runs a 3-4 defense much like Mike Tomlin and Dick LeBeau did during their time with the Steelers and went into detail on some of the core components of his scheme.

"Those guys have won a lot of games and played a lot of good defense," Graham said. "I'm not quite at that level in any way, shape or form, but I think it's more when you're talking about a 3-4 defense, you're talking about how the roster is put together. It gives you a lot of flexibility when you're bringing players in that fit that mold in terms of it helps you with special teams, it's gonna help you in the pass situations the more outside linebackers you have, and it helps you on the flexibility of the scheme.

"You guys all know this, there's gonna be more five DBs out there than there's gonna be four DBs. But once you start going into a 3-4 roster, you can start to think of the 4-2-5 nickel defense, more as 2-4-5, and it gives you flexibility. That's where you get all the fire zones and things that come up through that, but it's really about the flexibility of the roster, both schematically, defensively, special teams and then more pass rushers. That's how I see it."