Pittsburgh Steelers Arthur Moats

Pittsburgh Steelers outside linebacker Arthur Moats said the team's defense is practicing much more quickly than it did in 2015. He is shown here celebrating a sack against the Cleveland Browns, Sunday, Nov. 15, 2015, in Pittsburgh. (AP Photo/Don Wright)

(Don Wright)

LATROBE -- It took a day, sometimes two, last year for the Pittsburgh Steelers defense to install a play.

Last season was defensive coordinator Keith Butler's first in the role for Pittsburgh. He inherited a defense sprinkled with young or inexperienced players in key positions and before game days, it showed.

"We had to make sure everybody was understanding of it before we could move on," outside linebacker Arthur Moats said.

Steelers widely praised Butler for simplifying longtime defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau's defense and allowing players in it to play more instinctually, without being weighed down by nuances they weren't ready for.

In Year Two under Butler, with the same core players intact, that progress is showing itself in the way the team installs defensive plays, Moats said.

The 2015 Steelers defense had to run the same play, the same two or three calls, Moats said for a day-plus straight just to get enough film to figure out the ways it was messing up, then stop doing them.

They didn't reach the pace Pittsburgh has hit after just five days of training camp practice until the regular season, Moats said. It's allowing the team to put in plays, check out of them as if they were playing a game and otherwise add wrinkles, he said.

Said Moats: "As far as where we're at right now this is definitely way ahead."