Tuesday with Tomlin

If I've been asked once, I've been asked a thousand times already this season about the Steelers' cornerback situation.

Why isn't Brandon Boykin playing? What's up with Cortez Allen? It goes on and on.

Mike Tomlin said Tuesday that Ross Cockrell is the team's nickel cornerback - at least at this time. That could certainly change since the Steelers have other options there in Boykin and Allen.

But for now, Cockrell is the guy in the nickel and Antwon Blake is going to continue to play.

Save all the analysis from Pro Football Focus, that's what the Steelers are going with for now.

"As we sit here today, but obviously we have some preparation time," Tomlin said of Cockrell remaining as the team's nickel. "We have to evaluate Cortez and his practice performance and availability.

Boykin, as you can see, wasn't part of the equation.

The Steelers haven't necessarily been unhappy with Boykin, but he had an opportunity after Week 1 to get into the lineup and strained his hamstring the Monday after the opener against New England. That gave Cockrell an opportunity to show what he could do in practice and he has done nothing to lose the job.

But that doesn't mean the Steelers won't use or need Allen or Boykin moving forward.

At this point, however, the Steelers have allowed an NFL-low five passes of 20 or more yards - they gave up 50 such plays in 2014 - and are 13th in the NFL in pass defense, with a large chunk of the passing yards having been allowed in the fourth quarter of a blowout win over San Francisco.

The pass defense has been good and the Steelers aren't about to make a change to mess with that.

* Speaking of defense, Tomlin said today that the issues with the run defense against the Ravens last week were because the Steelers were intent on shutting down Baltimore's play-action passing game.

That meant the safeties and corners basically ignored the running backs coming out of the backfield and stuck with their coverage responsibilities.

In the first three games, the Steelers allowed 162 yards on 57 rushing attempts by opposing backs - a 3.2 yards per carry average. Justin Forsett nearly had that himself for the Ravens, hitting the Steelers for 150 yards on 27 carries.

"They got significant chunks via play-action pass going into the game, so we wanted to attack that to minimize those chunks," Tomlin said. "We realized in doing so, we might expose ourselves to some run. We probably exposed ourselves to a little more run than we anticipated, but you give them credit for executing from that standpoint."

* Tomlin said Ryan Shazier will open the week as questionable to return against San Diego from his shoulder injury but did note that the linebacker had improved "dramatically."

Expect Shazier to play. But Tomlin's wording is to make sure the second-year linebacker continues to practice all week.

* Daniel McCullers (knee) and Markus Wheaton (ankle) are also expected to be back this week, while Matt Spaeth is probably more on the doubtful side of questionable with a broken hand.

* Tomlin said the Steelers don't have to activate Martavis Bryant's until 4 p.m. Monday if they want to play him against the Chargers and said they probably wouldn't make an announcement about their intentions until 3:58 on Monday.

Expect Bryant to play.